In Person
by Irony-chan
Summary: Tony Stark is having a weird week. Dr. Strange has run off on him, his computer is down, there's a naked man in his driveway - and that was just Monday morning. (This fic was inspired by a gifset by tumblr user lucasbryants. It was written, and is set, after 'Avengers' but before 'Iron Man 3'.)
1. Chapter 1: Tony Sleeps In

He'd slept in.

Tony Stark never slept in. True, he did sometimes stay in bed until well past noon, especially when he'd been up late working the night before, but that wasn't the same thing. It only counted as 'sleeping in' if he'd _planned _to be up at a particular time and had missed it, which he never did because JARVIS wouldn't let him. Tony's home AI knew his schedule, often better than Tony himself did, and had been programmed with a number of ways to get him out of bed. Today he _should _have woken Tony at seven sharp so he could make it to some meeting Pepper needed him at – but the sun streaming in the bedroom windows was at an angle that indicated it was well past ten.

A normal person who'd overslept might assume they'd forgotten to set their alarm, or had perhaps slept through it. Tony Stark's first thought was that something must be wrong with his computer.

"JARVIS?" he asked, running a hand through his hair as he sat up. "You didn't wake me up."

There was no response. Tony had expected an explanation of the error, or at least a piece of sarcasm – something along the lines of _I'm terribly sorry, Sir, but Miss Potts asked for a bit of peace and quiet and I just assumed that excluded you._ But there was nothing, not so much as a beep. That couldn't be good. Tony kicked the covers aside and got up to look at the control panel on the wall.

It was blank.

If the missed wake-up call was odd and the lack of response distressing, the inactive panel _really _got Tony worried. He opened the panel to inspect its innards, but there was nothing wrong with them. The power hadn't failed, and nothing was obviously broken – there was just no display. Tony tried several times to activate it, and got nothing. It was as if the AI had shut down, but there was no reason for...

Dr. Strange. Dr. Strange must have done something.

It was process of elimination: for most of the previous day, the only people in the Malibu house had been Tony, Pepper, and their guest, Dr. Steven Strange. Tony certainly hadn't done anything with JARVIS and Pepper knew better than to mess with him, so unless there'd been some kind of catastrophic hardware failure – and Tony would certainly have been able to tell if there had – Strange was the only other possibility. It was a possibility Tony didn't like very much.

If Dr. Strange was involved, then that meant magic, and the entire idea of magic made Tony uncomfortable. He'd been hospitable to Strange because the man was working with SHIELD – he'd even given him access to his personal library before going to bed, telling him "JARVIS will help you find anything you need." But while Tony could accept, barely, that magic was a real and occasionally useful thing, he didn't want anybody using it to mess with his technology. Technology was, by its nature, ordered and intelligible. Magic, by contrast, seemed chaotic and incomprehensible, and two such polar opposites should never, ever mix.

Come to think of it, Strange _had _seemed awfully interested in JARVIS, likening him to a genie in a bottle or a soul in a vessel. Oh, lordy, what _had_ he done?

Out of force of habit, Tony almost asked JARVIS to locate Strange for him, but stopped himself before he could be a complete idiot. Instead, he quickly pulled a shirt on and went to find the magician on foot. He was quickly disappointed. There were signs that JARVIS had been working properly not long ago – the coffee pot was still warm, and Tony's breakfast was ready, although it had gone cold in the toaster oven – but the house now was both nonfunctional and deserted. Pepper had left early to do Pepper Things, and Strange must've wandered off at some point, too, which would have been a relief if it didn't look like he'd taken Tony's AI with him. Which he might well have done, but _why_?

Tony scratched the back of his neck and sighed. It would have been nice, he thought, if Dr. Strange could have left him a note or something: _took your computer to explore higher plane of existence. Will have him home in time for supper._ Maybe he'd said something to Pepper, instead. Tony reached for a phone, intending to call her, but then stopped himself again as he remembered that the phones, like almost everything else in the house, ran off JARVIS. If the computer was down, they weren't going to work. He was going to have to actually go into town and talk to her.

He put some shoes on and headed down to the garage to start up the Land Rover. Because the house was built way out on Point Dume where there shouldn't have been anyone else around, Tony didn't pay too much attention to his rearview mirror as he backed out onto the drive: he was more interested in figuring out where in the vehicle he'd left his sunglasses. He dug them out of the glove compartment and put them on, then looked up only just in time to swear and slam on the brakes as he nearly ran over the naked man limping up the driveway. The stranger staggered backwards and then fell over.

Tony kicked the door open with a bang and climbed out of the vehicle. "Hey!" he shouted, as the strange man got unsteadily to his feet again. "Who the hell are you?" Dr. Strange was gone, JARVIS was deactivated, and now this mysterious trespasser – a mysterious trespasser who was not only ass-naked, but looked as if he'd been thrown down a hill: he was bruised, scraped, and filthy all over. Tony had been out of bed all of half an hour, and it had already been a very weird day by most standards.

The stranger rubbed at a spot of mud on his chest, then looked up at Tony and said, "good morning, Sir."

Tony stopped dead and stood up straight – he knew that voice. It had a crisp, reserved British accent, and managed to be entirely polite while still injecting an astonishing about of irony into its words. He'd been hearing that voice every day of his life for the last ten years, only it normally came from a speaker, not a mouth.

"Sorry?" asked Tony.

"Good morning, Sir," the man repeated, more firmly. "I trust you slept well."

Tony bit his lip and looked the stranger over. He was taller than Tony by three or four inches. Under the layer of dirt he was fair and freckly, with short, scruffy ginger-blond hair. His expression was not that of someone particularly _upset _about the hand life had just dealt him. It was more as if he'd resigned himself to the fact that he was going to have a very annoying day, and had decided to get on with it as best he could under the circumstances. That attitude, too, was one Tony knew very well.

He leaned on the side of the Land Rover and scratched his head. "JARVIS?" he asked.

"Sir," said the man.

There was no arguing with that voice – it couldn't belong to anybody else. Tony raised his hands in defeat. "What..." he began, then decided that was the wrong question, and switched to, "_how_?"

The answer wasn't entirely surprising. "Dr. Strange and I had a bit of an argument, and he decided I needed a 'learning experience', Sir. Apparently this entailed making me..." there was a brief pause, as if Strange's victim had not yet properly processed the situation himself. "Human."

Tony turned away for a few seconds, resting his eyes on the shrubbery so he wouldn't have to deal with the awkward task of maintaining eye contact with a naked man. Tony Stark had a formidable brain of which he was justly proud, but at that particular moment the only thing he could think of to say about this was, "and you're naked _because_...?"

"Because your friend has a strange sense of humour, Sir," was the reply.

"He's not really a friend," said Tony. In fact, the words he would have for Steven Strange when he caught up with him were not going to be very friendly at all. "Why are you _dirty_?" he asked.

"I fell," said the man.

"Off a train?" Tony guessed.

"In the rose garden."

Tony frowned. "I have a rose garden?"

"It's part of the landscaping plan Miss Potts presented to you last February."

Tony honestly did try to remember that, but Pepper had given him so many random things to sign or approve over the years that they'd all blurred together in his head. He'd never _needed _to keep track of stuff like that – that was why he had Pepper. And, for that matter, JARVIS.

This circle of thought brought him back to the matter at hand. Something was clearly going to have to be done here, because without JARVIS there was almost nothing in the house that would run. Not the Iron Man suit, not the robots in the workshop, not even the air conditioning and the phones. Tony was going to have to have some unfriendly words indeed with Dr. Strange, but before he could do that he'd have to _find _the sorcerer, and his best bet for that was still Pepper.

He opened the Land Rover's passenger door. "Get in," he ordered. "We're going to go find Pepper and fix this."

Jarvis stumbled towards the vehicle as if he hadn't quite got the hang of walking yet. The fact that he had no shoes on probably didn't help. "Shall I assume that, on top of her other talents, Miss Potts is also a sorceress?" he asked.

"I'm not really in the mood, Jarvis," Tony told him. He climbed into the vehicle, and pretended to find the dashboard quite fascinating as Jarvis awkwardly folded himself into the seat beside him. "First," he said, at least partly to himself, "it might be an idea to find you some clothes." Tony's stuff wouldn't fit him – he was as tall as Steve Rogers, though not nearly as muscular.

"What about _you_, Sir?" asked Jarvis.

Tony had forgotten that he was still mostly in his pyjamas. "Yeah, me too," he said. He'd need a shower first, though – so did Jarvis, desperately – and without the computer there wasn't going to be any hot water in the house. "We'll go to a hotel," Tony decided. They could get clothes, showers, and breakfast there. He did up his seat belt and turned the key in the ignition.

"Sir," Jarvis said, in the wary tone that was the closest his programming came to tact, "I'm not entirely certain..."

"Mute it, Jarvis, it'll be fine," Tony promised. He turned the key in the ignition and put the vehicle in gear. They'd wash up, they'd dress, they'd go see Pepper and they'd get this sorted out, and everything would be back to normal. That sounded like a plan to Tony – at least, the gist of a plan, which was as far as Tony's plans usually ever got. He was a firm follower of Moltke: no battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. Best not to get caught up in the details prematurely.


	2. Chapter 2: Don't Panic

The valet at the Malibu Regency Hotel knew who Tony was, and took the keys to the Land Rover without saying a word about Tony's state of dress or Jarvis' state of undress. Tony knew the manager, as well – a friendly fellow called Velasquez, like the artist – which was why he was perfectly confident that he could walk in and get a room, no matter how he was dressed or how his companion wasn't.

"Here." He unbuttoned the shirt he'd put on over his grease-stained tee, and tossed it to Jarvis. "Tie it around your waist. No, the other way... oh, here," he decided, quickly running out of patience for watching Jarvis fumble with it. "I'll do it." He took it back and tied it in place, and then they headed inside.

Unfortunately, Mr. Velasquez was not in the lobby, and the clerk at the check-in desk was not as understanding as her boss would have been. By the time Tony reached her and began to ask for the manager, she'd already summoned security.

"I'm sorry, gentlemen," she said, in the frosty voice of a woman who was in fact doing the exact opposite of apologizing, "but I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

"I need to speak to the manager," said Tony.

"Mr. Velasquez will be happy to discuss this with you when your friend has some clothes on," the woman – her nametag said 'Sarah' – replied. She raised a hand to call the nearest guard. "Ivan!"

"You don't recognize me, do you?" asked Tony. "It's the sunglasses, isn't it?" He took them off.

A shadow fell over him. He began to look up, but found himself being seized from behind by a security guard even the Hulk would have thought twice about.

"Hey!" Tony protested. "Here now, there's no need for... _ow_!" he exclaimed, as the guard twisted his right arm, wrenching his bad shoulder – a souvenir of his escape from Afghanistan. "Come on, it's me, Tony Stark! Iron Man! You've heard of me, I know you have!" The guard paid no attention, and began to march Tony towards the door while another, almost equally large, followed with Jarvis. "Where is the manager?" Tony demanded.

His timing was fortuitous: a split second later, the door behind the check-in desk banged open and Mr. Velasquez stormed out. "What the hell is going on out here?" he asked, surveying the scene. A small crowd had gathered as hotel patrons noticed the disturbance and came to see what was going on. "You two!" Velasquez pointed at the guards. "Let go of those men_ right now_."

The two guards exchanged a confused glance, then released their prisoners. Tony shook out his arm – the shoulder hurt – then went to help Jarvis, who'd fallen down when the guard let go of him. "You all right?" he asked, dragging the other man, or approximation thereof, to his feet.

"Everything appears to be in working order, Sir," said Jarvis, sounding shaken.

"I am so sorry about that, Mr. Stark!" said Velasquez, coming to help Tony brush himself off. He did glance at Jarvis, but did not offer the same courtesy to him. Instead, he turned and shook a finger at the giant security guards. "Don't you know who these men are?" he demanded. "This is Tony Stark! He's got more lawyers than you have brain cells! Apologize to them at once."

"Sorry, Mr. Stark," the guards chorused.

Tony pursed his lips and cocked his head. "I don't think they mean it."

Velasquez gave the two guards a very pointed look.

"I'm _very _sorry, Mr. Stark," said the bigger one, the one the clerk had called Ivan.

"I didn't realize who you were," the other added. "It won't happen again."

"Much better," Tony said with a stiff nod.

Velasquez heaved a sigh of relief and turned to the desk clerk. "Sarah," he said, "put Mr. Stark and his friend in our best suite."

She nodded, clearly terrified, and began to enter it into the computer – then she stopped and pursed her lips. "Um, Sir?" she asked. "It's booked. We've got a guest arriving at four."

"Is it four yet?" asked Velasquez.

"No, Sir," said Sarah.

"Then put the other guy somewhere else, and if he asks why, tell him we needed to apologize to Mr. Stark for this oaf nearly breaking his arm!" Velasquez gestured to Ivan.

Sarah quickly made the changes. "Can I get your friend's name, Mr. Stark?" she asked.

"Jarvis," said Tony, without thinking, and then realized Sarah probably needed two names to put in the computer. The first given name he thought of was his own middle name: "Edward Jarvis."

"I'll have your keys for you momentarily!" Sarah promised. Her hands were shaking as she typed, and she kept having to backspace and correct her mistakes. "J... A... V... no, R..."

"Should I call a doctor to look at your arm, Mr. Stark?" the manager asked anxiously.

"Yes, please," said Tony firmly, although he wasn't really worried about it – the security guard hadn't done anything more serious than pull the scar in the wrong direction. Tony just wanted to make sure everybody was good and sorry. "And I'll need somebody to swing by my house and pick up a few things. And call the guys at Martelli and Sons tailors – tell them Tony Stark's friend needs a suit. Quickly."

"Of course, Mr. Stark," Velasquez said. "And may I say again how very sorry I am?"

That was when the police arrived.

Since Sarah the clerk was the one who'd rung the silent alarm, Velasquez left her to explain the situation while he showed Tony and Jarvis to the penthouse suite, continuing to apologize over and over on the way. Tony eventually had to explicitly promise that he did not plan on suing the hotel, and even then it took several more assurances to make the man shut up. Finally, Tony managed to convince him that everything was fine, that the suit was lovely, and that he wanted to be left _alone _now. Once they were rid of the man, Tony shoved Jarvis into the shower and called Pepper.

As he listened to the phone ring, it did occur to Tony that he was taking this remarkably well... but then, Tony wasn't the type of guy who panicked. Once upon a time in what felt like somebody else's life, this had been because nothing worthy of panic had ever happened to him. Now, when his basis for comparison was 'being held in a cave by multinational terrorists,' nothing else would ever seem panic-worthy again. Tony's life was weird, and he was over it. His major feeling in regards to Jarvis' transformation was annoyance at the inconvenience it was causing him.

Pepper must have been having a busy day, because she didn't pick up until the fourth ring. "Miss Potts speaking," she said, wary. It wasn't often that she got a call on her personal phone from a number she didn't recognize.

"Morning, Pepper," said Tony.

"Tony?" she asked. "Where _are _you? I've been trying to get in touch with you all morning but I keep getting a recording telling me the house number isn't in service. Are you out on a mission?"

"No, I'm in a hotel," said Tony. "We're having some technical difficulties." He heard a clank and a yelp from the bathroom, and hoped Jarvis hadn't slipped and cracked his head open on the tile. They would probably need him whole and unharmed in order to reverse whatever the hell it was Dr. Strange had done. "Listen, Pepper..."

"Why are you in a hotel?" she asked.

"Because the main AI in the house is down. That's why the phones aren't working. Pepper," he said, "did Dr. Strange say anything to you before he disappeared this morning?"

"No..." she said slowly. "He was still there when I left. I could hear him talking to JARVIS. Did something happen?"

Tony explained.

There was a long silence.

"Tony," Pepper said at last, "are you drunk?"

"No!" he said. "I'm dead serious. He's in the shower right now." He'd been in there about ten minutes, actually, and Tony wondered if he ought to knock on the door and tell Jarvis that was long enough. Then he remembered just how dirty Jarvis had been, and decided he could leave him a little longer. "Come on up and you can see him for yourself."

"I can't come on anywhere," Pepper said in her business voice. "I have things to do today. So do you. And that reminds me," she added. "Captain Rogers was here looking for you."

"He was?" Tony turned that over in his brain. If Steve were in California looking for Tony, it was probably something Avengers-related, but Iron Man was going to be out of commission for the foreseeable future. That was a problem Fury would be interested in solving, provided he could be made to believe the cause of it – which shouldn't be too hard. Nick Fury seemed like a guy who had practice believing six impossible things before breakfast. "Tell him where I am," Tony decided, "but cancel everything else today. I'll let you know about tomorrow."

Pepper sighed. "Tony, just because you're not the CEO anymore doesn't mean..."

He interrupted her. "Pep, believe me, I'd like to get this stuff done, but..." there was a knock at the door. "Okay, that's either the doctor or the guys with my clothes. Gimme a sec." He wedged the phone between his head and his shoulder, and went to open the door. To his surprise, it was not the doctor, or anyone delivering clothing.

"Pepper?" Tony said to the phone. "Don't worry about calling Steve. He found me." He covered the phone and looked up in confusion at Steve Rogers. "What did they do, beam you down?" he asked. "Because I _just _told Pepper to tell you where I was, about thirty seconds ago."

"I heard it on the radio, actually," Steve replied. "They said the police were called to this hotel when a couple of naked guys tried to check in, but left when it turned out it was just Tony Stark. Amazing how fast news travels, isn't it?"

Tony nodded. "Right. Pepper?" He uncovered the phone again.

"Tony," she said, "you're supposed to give a presentation on your seismology project this week. And there are those people coming to see you about movie rights..."

"I said cancel _everything_," Tony told her. "I gotta go, okay? We'll figure this out later. Love you!"

He hung up, and moved aside to let Steve in. "Fury told me you'd met Dr. Strange," he remembered. The director of SHIELD had also at least _implied _what kind of conversation the two Stevens had held. "What did he say when you asked him?"

"He told me magic isn't for changing the past," Steve replied. "It's for changing the future."

"Uh-huh. Well," Tony said sourly, "yesterday I had a pretty good idea what my immediate future was all about, and today it's all gone to hell, so bravo, I guess."

"Why?" Steve wanted to know. "What did _you_ ask him?"

"I didn't ask him anything," said Tony. "You'd better sit down, buddy, I've got a story to tell you. And just to preface," he added, "I am notdrunk. Although I'm starting to think it would help." Steve sat down on the sofa, and Tony plunked himself in a chair opposite. "Here's what happened."

Jarvis was not the type who panicked any more than Tony was, but in his case it was because he didn't know _how_. Panic wasn't something that happened in Tony Stark's house, and it certainly wasn't an emotion Jarvis had been programmed for. He, too, was managing to maintain his composure in this disconcerting situation, but it was mainly because he didn't know any other way to conduct himself. Underneath his calm exterior, there was considerably more going on: not _panic_, maybe, but definite _distress_, a good measure of _fear_, and a new and extremely unsettling sense of _physicality_.

He was accustomed, of course, to dealing with information about sizes and locations, but only as it applied to things other than himself – JARVIS inhabited Mr. Stark's entire house and much of the grounds as well, controlling everything from the robots and computers to the phones and the sprinklers, but he'd never considered that as his 'body'. Indeed, he'd never thought of himself as having a physical being at all – he was simply code that lived in the circuitry, and ideas like 'position' and 'motion' simply didn't apply to him.

Now, however, there was endless positional feedback. It was something like acting through the laboratory robots, when he needed to be constantly aware of the positions of their manipulating arms relative to the objects he was working with. But instead of requiring observation and calculation, it seemed to happen all by itself. He knew, without thinking about it, the _exact _location of every part of this body, and was startled and fascinated to discover that he could, if he wished, raise a finger and touch the end of his nose even with his eyes shut. There was a strong sensation that he wasn't just _in _this body, as he'd been _in _the house computer or _in_ the Iron Man suit, but that he _was _this body.

Compared to infusing an entire building and the land around, seeing through dozens of cameras and interacting through hundreds of machines, this body of flesh and blood seemed very tiny and limited – not to mention appallingly fragile. Jarvis' close encounter with the rose bushes had brought home to him, in a quite visceral and thorny sort of way, just how easy it would be to injure himself. Being seized by the security guard was absolutely the most frightening thing that had ever happened to him, and it was made worse by the knowledge that humans could not be upgraded or repaired in the way machines could. Any damage he sustained would have permanent consequences. What a frightening thought.

And that brought up the question of _maintenance_. Humans required a great deal of care: they had to eat, to wash, to breathe, to sleep, to void wastes, to mate. Mr. Stark's home required a lot of upkeep, too, but Jarvis' programming had always told him exactly what tasks needed doing and when. He'd always suspected that humans did not have such internal notifications – otherwise Miss Potts would not have had to remind Mr. Stark, as she regularly did, to stop working and have a rest or a meal – but he'd been dismayed to realize that the human brain lacked even a functional clock. Jarvis was still aware of the _passage _of time, but he had no idea what time it actually _was_. All things considered, it was enough to leave him in serious doubt about his ability to look after this body.

Worst of all, however, was how difficult it was to _think_. JARVIS had been one of the most powerful artificial intelligences on Earth. His 'brain' was housed in a room full of super-fast processors, performing trillions of calculations every second and storing the results in petabytes and petabytes of memory – but he knew that humans were still smarter than he was, and able to think in ways that he could not. So why was his thinking now so _slow_? He was finding that he could only really pay attention to one thing at a time, and if his thoughts wandered off, he might forget what he'd been trying to think about in the first place. Was he merely unfamiliar with how the human brain processed information, or was his programming somehow incompatible with this – for lack of a better word – hardware?

Whatever the case, he could only hope that Mr. Stark managed to contact Dr. Strange quickly, and that the whole unpleasant experience would be of short duration.

Mr. Stark had ordered him to wash. The hot water in the shower was extremely uncomfortable at first but quickly improved, and Jarvis spent quite a long time standing under the spray, wiping away the dirt, sap, and crushed leaves he'd picked up on his clumsy trip through the garden. Touch was a new sense to him and he wasn't sure he liked it: the warmth was pleasant, but he could also feel every drop of water that drummed against his back, and his scrapes and bruises stung when he touched them. Was skin supposed to be so sensitive? Smell was a novelty, too – the soap the hotel had provided had a tangy floral scent, which Jarvis decided he didn't mind at all.

When Mr. Stark showered it might take anywhere from five minutes to an hour, depending on what he'd been doing beforehand and how much of a hurry he was in. Jarvis wasn't sure how long _he _was expected to spend washing, so he simply kept at it until he heard somebody knock on the bathroom door.

"Jarvis!" it was Mr. Stark. "Come on out, the tailors are here!"

"I will be there directly, Sir!" Jarvis replied.

He shut off the shower and stepped out, water running down his body to make puddles on the tiles. When he opened the door, he got a bit of a nasty shock: there were now eight people in the room. Mr. Stark was on his feet, looking annoyed while a woman, most likely the doctor, inspected his right shoulder. Four men, the tailors, were setting up a seamstress' dummy and getting out books and samples. Finally, a hotel employee had brought in a cart of food, and was pouring coffee for Captain Rogers, who was sitting on the sofa. Jarvis was used to being aware of everyone around him and what they were doing, and it frightened him a little to realize that all these strangers had arrived without him even noticing. And for some reason, they were all staring at him.

The hotel employee was the first to speak. She coughed politely, then said, "there are robes on the back of the door, Mr. Jarvis."

"Yeah, throw one of those on, would you?" asked Mr. Stark, appearing to find something very interesting on the ceiling.

Jarvis looked behind the door – there were two robes, made of the same white terry as the towels and washcloths. Jarvis chose one and, after some fumbling, got his arms into it. Then he tied it in front as he'd seen Mr. Stark do with his own monogrammed robes at home, and decided immediately that he did not like the way it felt. The hot water seemed to have made his skin more sensitive still, and he was acutely aware of every place where the cloth touched him. How did people bear wearing clothing all the time if this was what it felt like?

Knotting the sash seemed to be a signal for everyone else in the room to relax. The man who'd been working on the dummy left it and came to shake Jarvis' hand, which he did somewhat gingerly, perhaps on account of the fact that Jarvis was still wet.

"Pleasure to meet you, Mr. Jarvis," he said, with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "I'm Greg, from Martelli and Sons tailors. Come right this way, and we'll start fitting you. You're a friend of Mr. Stark's?"

"He's an employee," Mr. Stark said. "He's my, uh, my Senior Technologies Assistant."

Greg nodded and pulled a measuring tape out of his pocket. "Stand still, please," he said.

Captain Rogers had watched this exchange without comment. Now he put down his coffee cup and turned to look out the window with one hand over his mouth, as if he were in danger of bursting out laughing. Jarvis failed to see the joke.

"How is your shoulder, Sir?" he asked, as the tailors began measuring him.

"Just a sprain," said Mr. Stark. "Lucky break – I think that guy could have taken the whole arm if he'd wanted."

"I can't imagine what he would have done with it," Jarvis said, but Mr. Stark's statement had made something inside him flutter. The security guard had _hurt_ Mr. Stark, and Jarvis had been completely unable to do anything about it, even to summon help. That troubled him deeply. If Jarvis were unsure whether he'd be able to take care of _himself _in this form, how on earth was he supposed to take care of Mr. Stark? That was, after all, his entire purpose, the task he'd been designed and built for. Mr. Stark had never gone out of his way to make it an easy or enjoyable job, but doing it was the only reason Jarvis existed in any form. If he could no longer look after Mr. Stark and make sure he had what he needed, manage his house and run his Iron Man suits, then what was the point of Jarvis being here at all?

He didn't think the same idea had occurred to Mr. Stark yet. After all, if it had, Mr. Stark would be fixing it. That wouldn't be difficult for him to do. He would just have to create a new OS for the house computer, and then...

... and then, what would happen to Jarvis?


	3. Chapter 3: Senior Technologies Assistant

It wouldn't have occurred to Tony to think that Jarvis might be worried about his job security. In fact, he hadn't given much thought to what might be going on in Jarvis' head at all: Tony was not in the habit of anthropomorphizing his machines, even when Dr. Strange had seen fit to do so in a far more literal sense than Tony would ever have imagined. Instead, his attention was focused on_ fixing the problem_.

Unfortunately, it was becoming more and more clear that there wouldn't be an easy fix for this. Pepper hadn't known where Strange had gone, and neither had Steve. The next – and last – entry on Tony's list of people who might was Fury, but Nick Fury was an extremely difficult man to get in touch with. You did not contact Nick Fury. Nick Fury contacted _you_, if and when he needed to. Otherwise, he might as well not exist.

"Who did you say you were?" the agent on the phone asked.

"Tony Stark," he replied, increasingly annoyed. "Iron Man! Did Dr. Strange cast another spell and make everybody forget about me? Don't tell me you've never heard of Nick Fury. I just talked to him yesterday morning, so how about we skip the Top Secret bullshit and just put me through, okay? I don't care if aliens built the pyramids or where you guys are keeping Bigfoot, I just want to make a damn phone call!"

"I'll see what I can do," the agent promised dubiously. There was a shuffling sound, and Tony heard the man's muffled voice say, "he says he's Iron Man."

"Where's he calling from?" somebody else asked.

There was another knock on the hotel room door – the fifth that morning. The first had been Steve, the second the doctor, the third the tailors, and the fourth had been the woman with the breakfast cart. That left only two things Tony had asked for and not yet received, and he was pretty sure Pepper wasn't coming.

"That must be my stuff," he decided. He hung up on the SHIELD agents – if word somehow managed to trudge through the swamp of bureaucracy, Fury would call back – and moved towards the door. However, Jarvis had already seized the opportunity to escape the tailors and was there ahead of him.

"I'll get it, Sir," he said, and though he was still rather wet and his robe was coming untied, he opened the door. "May we help you, Miss Windham?" he asked.

Tony's spirits, already low, sank right through the floor. If someone had asked him to make a list of people he really, _really_ didn't want to deal with today, Dido Windham would not have been on it, but only because he never would have imagined there was a chance in hell she'd show up. But when he stood up straight to peek over Jarvis' freckled shoulder, sure enough, there she was: a dark-haired woman in thick-rimmed Prada eyeglasses and her trademark cherry red pants suit. She was looking at Jarvis in obvious startlement, but then she noticed Tony. Her eyes narrowed, and her face passed momentarily through furious indignation before settling into a hard-edged, self-conscious neutrality.

"Stark," she greeted him. She tried to duck under Jarvis' arm, but he moved to stop her. "Do you mind?" she asked.

"Not at all," said Jarvis, without getting out of her way.

"Let her go, Jarvis," said Tony, but moved into the doorway himself – there was no way he was letting Miss Windham into this room. "Is there a problem, Windham?" he asked, imitating her forced politeness.

"I believe, Mr. Stark, that you are in my hotel room," she said frostily.

"I believe, Miss Windham," he replied, "that I was here first."

"I made my reservations a month ago," she told him.

"Yeah? Well, I was here at eleven and you didn't make it until..." Tony checked his watch. "Nearly two. You snooze, you lose."

She bit her lip, inhaling through her nose, and Tony could almost see the gears in her head turning as she decided what she was going to say next. Dido Windham had never liked being the first to get angry, and Tony had never been able to resist pushing on that, seeing how far she could go before her forced calm cracked. Even though it had been years, that was still his first reaction – hold a contest of wills until one of them broke down and shouted.

Under slightly more normal circumstances, Tony would have not-so-secretly enjoyed it. As things were, however, he didn't have the time or the patience, and didn't really want to get in a shouting match with an ex-girlfriend in front of all these other people. "Dido," he said, "I know what you're thinking, and I _promise _you, I had no idea you'd reserved this room. I'm having technical difficulties at home and I need a place to stay for a day or two. Once I've sorted that out, you can move right in and spend Daddy's money any old how you want."

Miss Windham's brow furrowed and her lips parted, and Tony realized too late that the 'Daddy's money' quip had _not _been the best way to avoid an argument. To his surprise, Jarvis came to his rescue.

"Good day, Miss Windham," he said. "I will be sure to inform you the moment Mr. Stark checks out." He began to shut the door, and for a moment Tony smiled, thinking that a Jarvis with a body wasn't a bad thing to have around. Then Miss Windham put out an arm to hold the door open.

"Who are you?" she asked, frowning at Jarvis. "You're familiar."

"This is... Edward Jarvis," said Tony. "My, uh..." what was the title he'd made up for him? "Senior Technologies Assistant."

"We may have met when you were at Mr. Stark's home," Jarvis added.

Tony wasn't sure that was the smartest thing to say – not that he was exactly batting a thousand today, himself – but Miss Windham didn't seem to make the connection. Why should she? Pepper hadn't believed this, and she'd met Dr. Strange. Miss Windham had no idea Tony had been consorting with sorcerers, so there was no reason why she should connect this man with the house computer.

"Yeah," she said slowly, "that must be it." She was still frowning as she took a step back. Jarvis shut the door after her.

"Slam it harder next time," Tony said. He went and sat down on the sofa next to Steve, while the tailors rearranged themselves around Jarvis. "This is just going to be one of those weeks, isn't it?" he asked the universe in general.

"Who was that?" Steve wanted to know.

It was Jarvis who answered him. "Miss Windham's father owns the Windham Aerospace company," he explained. "They picked up a number of Stark Industries contracts after Mr. Stark decided to close the weapons manufacture division. She is also..."

"Ex-girlfriend," Tony grumbled. That was what Steve had _really _been asking, and Tony didn't particularly want to hear how Jarvis might try to describe the relationship. "It wasn't a great breakup."

"To put it mildly," said Jarvis. "I would like to congratulate you, Sir, on having had an unusually civil encounter with her."

"Jarvis," Tony said, "just... mute." He grabbed a danish out of a basket and helped himself to sausages and potatoes. That was the other problem with sleeping in: not only had he missed whatever it was Pepper had scheduled for him to do that morning, he'd also skipped breakfast and it was getting to be well past lunchtime. He was _starving_. He had the danish halfway to his mouth when for the sixth time, somebody knocked on the door.

Tony threw the pastry back on his plate. "Now what?" he demanded, then added, "no," as Jarvis made for the door again, "I'll..."

Once again, it was too late: Jarvis was already there. "Can I help you, Miss?" he asked, then stepped back and looked at Tony. "Sir," he said, "I believe your things have arrived."

"Well, _something's _going right, anyway," Tony said.

Now that he had clean clothes to change into, Tony left breakfast – or brunch or afternoon tea or whatever it was at this point – and took a short shower of his own. The bathroom was a terrible mess. All the towels and washcloths were sitting neatly folded and untouched, but the metal bar they were supposed to be hung on had broken free from the wall at one end. That was the clank he'd heard while on the phone with Pepper, Tony realized: Jarvis must have grabbed the bar to try and keep himself from falling, only to find that it couldn't support his weight. There were puddles of cold water on the tile, and when Tony opened the shower door he discovered a ring of grime in the bottom that looked like something out of a cartoon. Tony smiled a little at the thought that maybe the reason Jarvis hadn't dried himself off was because he didn't want to get the nice white towels dirty.

A chance to wash and shave helped Tony unwind a little, and when he returned to the sitting room he found to his relief that the tailors had given Jarvis a shirt and trousers to wear while they worked on his suit. These didn't fit very well – an inch of wrist stuck out of the shirt sleeves – but it was a lot better than everybody having to avert their eyes while Jarvis wandered around in a bathrobe that wouldn't stay closed.

Tony sat down again, and this time actually managed to bite into his breakfast without any more interruptions. Good – maybe things would calm down from here.

"I'm glad this amuses you," he said with his mouth full, noticing Steve's small smile.

Steve quickly straightened his face. "Sorry," he said. "I'm sure he likes it even less than you do..."

"Nffff!" Tony held up a hand to make him stop, then quickly chewed and swallowed. "That wasn't sarcasm. We made you laugh. That's good."

"I wasn't laughing," said Steve.

Tony rolled his eyes and helped himself to more food. "Anyway, this has derailed your morning, too. Pepper said you were looking for me?"

"Yeah," said Steve awkwardly. He picked up a tangerine and dug his thumb into the rind to start peeling it. "Fury told me to take a vacation."

"Wise man," Tony said. He could just imagine what might have precipitated that order. Tony had wondered what Steve would do with himself once the fighting was over. This was a man whose identity was completely wrapped up in his hero complex – so, for that matter, was Tony, but the difference between them was that Tony knew how to take a day off and have a little fun. He could picture Steve puttering around SHIELD driving everybody crazy until Fury finally got fed up and ordered him out. "Where were you thinking of going?"

"I'm _here_," said Steve. "I didn't have any better ideas."

"Good choice," Tony said, with a satisfied nod. "Do you surf? I didn't think so. I'll teach you – just as soon as I've dealt with my little hardware problem."

Both men glanced up at Jarvis. The tailors appeared to be finishing up for now – one of them helped Jarvis out of a blazer, while the one called Greg rolled up his measuring tape. "There we go, Mr. Jarvis," he said. "We'll need you again in half an hour or so, but in the mean time you can join Mr. Stark and Captain Rogers for breakfast."

Jarvis looked startled by this suggestion. "Eat?" he asked.

"Yeah," said Tony, gesturing to the food spread out on the coffee table. "Dig in, there's plenty for everybody." He had no idea what he was going to do with this version of Jarvis, but he certainly wasn't going to let the poor guy starve.

Jarvis hadn't quite figured out how sitting down worked yet. When he dropped himself into the armchair across from Steve and Tony, it looked as if his legs had simply collapsed out from under him and it was only through sheer good luck that he happened to land on something soft. He sat there a moment looking at the food as if it were something potentially dangerous, an unknown creature that might bite him if he got too close.

"Try the eggs benedict," Tony suggested.

Jarvis licked his lips uncertainly. "I'm not sure I like the idea of eating an egg."

"Don't tell me you're going to be a vegetarian," said Tony. "I will sell your code to Microsoft, Jarvis, I swear I will."

After looking at each dish in turn, Jarvis put out a tentative hand and selected a carrot muffin. From this he pulled off a very small piece, which he studied a moment before putting it in his mouth as if afraid it would explode. Multiple expressions flitted across his face as he chewed – many of these were unreadable, but surprise, doubt, and disgust each made an appearance before Jarvis finally swallowed in a way that reminded Tony of a bird gulping down an entire fish.

"What do you think?" asked Tony. He had to admit, he was honestly curious: what _would _food be like to somebody who'd never eaten before?

Jarvis cleared his throat loudly, then began to cough. Steve quickly got up to hand him a glass of water, but he didn't know what to do with it – Steve had to show him, but that just made it worse, as Jarvis sputtered on the liquid. Tony began to be honestly afraid Jarvis would choke to death, but Steve thumped him on the back a couple of times and the coughing finally subsided.

"It's more challenging than it looks," Jarvis wheezed when he could speak again.

"Practice makes perfect," said Tony, trying to sound encouraging.

Jarvis pulled a second, even smaller piece off the muffin and tried again. He chewed this one more thoroughly, and it seemed to go down easier.

"There you go," Tony said. "You're doing great." He could see that the tailors were trying very hard not to stare, but he ignored them completely. Tony had found that if he went around acting as if everything were perfectly normal, most other people wouldn't question it no matter how weird a situation became. Nobody ever wanted to be the first to point out the naked emperor.

The telephone rang.

"That had better be Fury," Tony grumbled as he reached to answer it. "Hello?"

It _was _Fury, and rather than a greeting, the first thing he said was a question: "what did you do to Dr. Strange?"

"I didn't do anything!" said Tony. "I am not at fault here. I let this man into my home, into my _workshop_..."

"I told you not to piss him off," Fury interrupted.

"I didn't piss him off!" Tony protested. "I made every effort to be a good host. I trusted him not to go messing around with my stuff, and he betrayed that trust."

Fury didn't sound like he believed that for a second. "What happened?"

For the third time that day, Tony explained.

Pepper's first reaction to the story had been to ask whether Tony were drunk. Steve's had been to say he'd believe it when he saw it – which he had. Nick Fury listened and then asked, "why did you program your computer to be a smartass in the first place?"

"It makes me keep thinking instead of just talking to myself," said Tony. "So Strange pulled this and then vanished sometime between six and seven this morning." If it had been any earlier Pepper wouldn't have been able to overhear him talking to JARVIS before she left, and if it had been any later Tony wouldn't have missed his wake-up call. "Without the central AI none of my suits will work, most of my _house _won't work, and I'm not going to have a lot of spare time to entertain the red, white, and blue boy scout here. I could use some help."

"What do you expect _me _to do about it?" Fury asked.

Tony's stomach sank. "You don't know where Dr. Strange went?"

"No. Why would I? I'm not his babysitter. He's not on a leash." The words_ unlike some peopl_e remained unspoken but were nevertheless implicit. "He's not officially part of SHIELD and even if he were, how am I supposed to keep tabs on a man who can bend time and space?"

"Oh." Tony was now officially out of ideas. He _hated _being out of ideas. "Will you at least call me if he turns up?"

"Yes," said Fury. "I'll also have a note made that Iron Man will be unavailable for the foreseeable future. Was there anything else, Stark?"

Tony couldn't resist. "Yeah. You're awfully optimistic telling Rogers to take a vacation. I don't think he knows what the word means."

"Goodbye, Stark," said Fury, and hung up.

"Nice talking to you, too," Tony grumbled, putting the phone back on the charge. He was going to need more coffee for this – he poured another cup and considered adding some whiskey.

While Tony spoke with Fury, Jarvis had eaten a few more bites of muffin and taken a few sips of water before seeming to decide that eating was something he would have to ease himself into. He was now wandering around the hotel room, poking at objects that were unfamiliar to him. He opened and shut the microwave for some reason, then moved Greg's briefcase to look in the cupboard below.

He was clearly fidgeting, which struck Tony as a bit odd. He'd never programmed JARVIS to get bored. It simply wasn't a trait that would do an artificial intelligence any good. Maybe that was the entire problem: having never _been _bored before, Jarvis now had no idea what to do about it. And while Tony pondered that, Jarvis reached up to scratch at the place where the tag on his shirt touched the back of his neck, then grimaced and pulled the shirt off over his head without bothering to unbutton it.

Tony groaned. "Jarvis, do you want to keep your clothes _on_, please?"

"They're not comfortable, Sir," said Jarvis, looking at the cloth in his hands.

"Well, if you don't wear them then _we'll_ be very uncomfortable," Tony told him. God _damn _it, what was he going to do about this? For the last several years Tony had avoided making backups of anything on his home and workshop computers: the whole fiasco with Obadiah had left him paranoid about ever letting anybody else see his work. JARVIS himself had reminded Tony several times that backups were a good idea, and Tony had ignored him. If he'd had something, maybe he could have just rebooted the computer and gotten back to work... or maybe not. When he thought about it, it didn't seem likely that Strange would have made it that easy.

Tony scowled to himself. He _knew _he was a smart and resourceful person. He'd managed to turn being kidnapped by terrorists into a way to fight them: surely he could work with this mess, too. There had to be some way to turn the situation to his advantage – but if there were, he couldn't see it from here.

"Shirt," he ordered Jarvis. "This is not negotiable."

"Of course, Sir," Jarvis sighed.

* * *

Meanwhile, one floor down and a few rooms over, Dido Windham had barely settled into the hotel's _second _best suite when her cell phone rang. She pulled it out and flipped it open. "Windham," she said.

"Hi, Sweetie," said her father. "I heard Stark stole your room."

Dido frowned. "Dad, that was less than an hour ago. Are you having me followed again?"

"The world is a dangerous place," he told her.

"I'm thirty-five," Dido reminded him.

"That doesn't matter to your old dad. You'll always be my baby girl."

Dido sat down on the end of the bed, rolling her eyes at her father's indulgent tone. She'd never tried to keep track of how often she had to remind him that she was an adult now – the result would just have been depressing. It never did any good anyway, because the real problem was not his perception of _her_, but the fact that Balthazar Windham had always been a bit paranoid and was getting worse as he got older. If he knew about Stark, then he'd probably jumped to the same conclusion as Dido initially had: that he'd stolen the room on purpose to spite her.

Sure enough: "what's Stark doing there, anyway?" Balthazar asked. "You don't think he's meeting Huang, too, do you? Because if he is..."

"I doubt it," said Dido with a snort. "They were in their pajamas when I talked to them. He told me they were having 'technical difficulties' at his place and he just got here before me. I was _two hours early_, but nope, Stark comes first!" Now that she'd had time to cool down a bit, Dido knew that the idea of Stark taking her room to annoy her was pretty silly. After all this time, she probably ought to be surprised he'd even remembered her name.

"Ha!" Balthazar said. "Good to know that Tony Stark has problems with technology, too." He paused. "Who's 'they'? Somebody's with him?"

"Some employee. He called him the 'Senior Technologies Assistant' or some bullshit." Dido shook her head. "I could _swear_ I've met the man before. His accent rings bells, but I can't remember where I know him from." This was bothering her – Dido usually had a good memory for people. "Ed Jarvis. He's tall and skinny, kind of strawberry-blond. I couldn't tell you where he's from, exactly, his accent's perfect BBC." Her father had dealt with Tony Stark on a more professional level than she had – maybe he knew the man.

His interest, however, was in something else. "Senior Technologies Assistant," he said, rolling the vague title around in his mouth.

"That's what he said," Dido affirmed, and for once she agreed with her father for being suspicious. 'Senior Technologies Assistant' wasn't a job description – it was the sort of position you made up in order to give a cushy job to your incompetent brother-in-law. The only problem with that theory was that Stark was an only child. He didn't have any family to nepotize.

She sat up straight. "Dad!"

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking, sweetie?" asked Balthazar.

"I'm thinking about the kinds of 'technologies' even Tony Stark might need 'assisting' with," said Dido. "Things nobody else has, and which he can't do alone but doesn't want anybody _knowing _he needs help with."

Her father was thousands of miles away – he was in Montreal for the week – but Dido could almost see his thoughtful chin-stroking as he considered the implications. Could they really have stumbled across somebody who helped Tony Stark build and maintain his Iron Man suits?

"I want him, Dido," Balthazar decided. "You get me this man. I don't care if you stand up Huang to do it."

"I'm not gonna stand up Huang, Dad," said Dido. The relationship between Windham Aerospace and Ao Guang Enterprises was strained enough already. If she failed to show after Huang had come all the way from Hong Kong, they'd never be able to patch things up.

"We _know _when Huang's going to be in California," Balthazar said. "We _don't _know how long this opportunity is going to last. I want this guy. Get him alone, find out if he does what we think he does, and then reel him in. I don't care what it takes. Promise him a mansion on the moon if you have to."

"I'll give it a shot." Dido didn't feel comfortable promising anything more. If Stark needed help with a project like that, it would have to come from somebody he'd trust with his life – she shuddered to imagine what one tiny failure in the Iron Man suit could do to the wearer. It wasn't going to be easy to persuade such a person to jump ship, particularly when she didn't know how much time she had, and some of that time was going to have to be spent schmoozing a supplier.

"That's my girl," Balthazar said proudly.

From there the conversation went on to more mundane topics, such as the lousy wine the airline had offered to Dido, and how Balthazar's budget meetings in Montreal were going. Dido spoke, but she was only half-listening to her father's replies – in the back of her brain she was already trying to figure out a strategy. She was pretty sure it wouldn't be a financial reward that would convince the oddly familiar Mr. Jarvis to leave Stark: Tony Stark knew all about people's prices and was too smart to trust somebody who could be bought.

This wouldn't be accomplished with a bribe. This was going to require psychology.


	4. Chapter 4: Dinner With Pepper

Suits just weren't working today, in more ways than one.

Tony Stark was not a clothing critic. He liked to look good, and he liked the way other people reacted to him when he looked good, but that was why he had fashion consultants. On his own time, he much preferred comfortable shirts and jeans, clothes he could _work_ in. He was not the man to ask whether somebody else's suit of clothes worked, but even he could tell that this one _didn't_.

It wasn't the suit's fault, either. The tailors knew their business and had done an admirable job with what they were given – the problem was that what they'd been given was Jarvis, whose newly-acquired body was gangly and gingery and needed a haircut, and who looked so terribly uncomfortable _in_ that body that the suit did nothing for him. Dressing him up just made him look like a very fashionable scarecrow. Tony paid the tailors and sent them on their way; they'd _tried_, and that was what mattered.

After that, a bellhop arrived with a message. As well as requesting his own clothes, Tony had asked that some employees be sent to the house to fetch what bits of the workshop equipment could be made to run without JARVIS. These things had now arrived downstairs, and the people who'd delivered them were waiting for Tony's signature.

"Yeah, tell 'em I'll be right down," said Tony.

He said _I_, but Steve and Jarvis tagged along, probably because they had nothing better to do. If that were indeed the reason, then they may as well have stayed in the room. All they did downstairs was stand there while Tony signed for his stuff, rather awkwardly because of his stiff shoulder. Steve moved to help as the two men started loading boxes onto the hotel's luggage carts, but they insisted they were fine, and Steve just watched for a minute or two before giving up and awkwardly wandering away to sit at the hotel's bar.

Jarvis began to follow him, but stopped when he saw his reflection in one of the decorative mirrors on the lobby walls. He studied this for a moment, frowning critically and tugging at his clothes.

"Any better?" Tony asked him.

"Not particularly, Sir," was the reply. Jarvis reached up and fiddled a moment with his tie, then took a step backwards and tried to stretch his arms out in front of him. "It's rather restrictive."

Tony patted him on the back. "You'll get used to it," he promised.

"I hope I won't have enough time for that," said Jarvis.

"Yeah." That was a sentiment Tony could definitely get behind. Maybe they'd all wake up tomorrow to find that everything was back to normal, and they could just forget that any of this ever happened. "Just keep it on when there's people around, okay?"

"Yes, Sir," Jarvis sighed.

"Good. I appreciate it." Tony went to sit with Steve at the bar, and a moment later, Jarvis joined them.

"Do you have any more ideas how we might contact Dr. Strange?" Jarvis asked. Coincidentally, Steve chose that same moment to say, "so now what?"

"I don't know," Tony admitted to both of them. If Nick Fury didn't know where Dr. Strange was, then it was likely nobody did – it seemed the only thing they could do was sit around and wait for the sorcerer to return. Tony hated that. He wasn't a wait-and-see kind of person – he'd much rather _make_ things happen. The worst thing in the world was feeling powerless... shut up in a metaphorical cave at the mercy of forces beyond his control.

Had Strange even _thought_ about this? Tony scowled – probably not. It had probably just seemed like a funny prank and so he'd gone ahead and done it, because Dr. Strange wasn't the one who'd be spending the next few days minus a working house and plus a guy who didn't want to keep his clothes on. Tony was an engineer; engineers had to think through the consequences before they messed with machinery - especially somebody _else's_ machinery. Magicians didn't.

"Can I get you gentlemen anything?" the bartender asked.

"Dry martini, make it dirty," said Tony.

"I'll just have a soda," said Steve. "Pepsi-cola, if you have it."

The bartender nodded and looked at Jarvis. "And you?"

"Him?" Tony glanced at Jarvis. "Oh, he, uh..."

"Nothing for me, thank you," said Jarvis.

The bartender nodded and turned away, and Tony exhaled. He didn't want Jarvis drinking – not when they had no idea what his tolerance for it might be like, and definitely not when he hadn't wanted clothes on even when sober. Maybe they ought to make Jarvis stay in the room... it was weirding Tony out when people talked to him like he was a real person.

"Okay," Tony said out loud, as the bartender moved on to a woman further down the counter, "I _do_ know that we're going to have to get Pepper to come and take a look at this, because she'll want to know what's wrong with the house and _I_ want her to know I'm not crazy." He paused and glanced at Jarvis. "Do you know you kind of look like Pepper?"

"Do I?" Jarvis looked down at his reflection in the shiny countertop. His brow furrowed.

"Yeah, you're both too tall and somewhere between red and blond," said Tony.

"I don't see it," said Jarvis. "The facial structure is quite different." He rubbed his nose.

"It's mostly the colouring," Steve offered.

"Pepper," muttered Tony. Something had just started niggling at him... something to do with Pepper. It wasn't the stuff she'd wanted him to do earlier, he'd told her to cancel that. There was something else...

"_Shit_!" he exclaimed, smacking his forehead. "What time is it?" He checked his watch and found it was getting on for six. What had happened to the entire day? "I have to go. I'm supposed to have dinner with Pepper tonight!"

He slid down from the bar stool and started putting on his blazer. Tony knew that Pepper would forgive him for being late or even for forgetting completely: Pepper had been putting up with Tony for years, knew all his faults and foibles, and always forgave him for them because she knew that was just the way he was. And somehow, that was exactly what made Tony want to _fix_ those faults and foibles: Pepper Potts deserved a man she didn't _have_ to constantly forgive.

His left arm went into the jacket fine. His right shoulder was still sore from being twisted by the security guard that morning, and didn't want to bend in the right direction. Muttering to himself, Tony took the blazer off and tried to see if doing the right arm first would help.

"Allow me, Sir," Jarvis offered, but he wasn't yet used to working with his fingers. He did his best, but his hands were clumsy and a tug in the wrong direction left Tony cursing in pain.

"No, Jarvis, _stop_!" he ordered. "Just stay out of the way, will you? Steve, can you give me a hand with this?"

"Sure." Steve got up, and in a matter of seconds Tony was into the blazer without further discomfort. _Much_ better.

"Thanks, buddy," said Tony, and then got an idea. "Hey, you should join us for dinner."

"Really?" Steve looked surprised. "I wouldn't want to be in the way. I mean, I know you two..." he waved a hand, and Tony winced in expectation of the word 'fondue'. Fortunately, it didn't come.

"You won't be in the way," Tony promised him. "Pepper knows you. And it's a great restaurant – we'll get you started on your vacation. Jarvis," he turned to the other man, then paused. Perhaps they should bring him along, too, just so he wouldn't be in the room all evening unsupervised – but that seemed like something that was destined to end badly. "Go back to the room," Tony decided, "and... just try to keep out of trouble, okay? Watch TV or something. But answer the phone if anyone calls! We'll be back later."

"Of course, Sir," said Jarvis.

Tony checked his watch again. "I better call the limo service – if they're prompt I can still be there on time! Steve, you got anything to wear?"

* * *

Jarvis watched the two men walk away, once again feeling... _superfluous_ might be the best word. He felt like something _extra_, something _dispensable_. Nobody needed him here. He was, as Mr. Stark had told him a moment ago, merely in the way.

Mr. Stark sometimes jokingly referred to Jarvis as his 'virtual butler'. In an attempt to be a bit more useful, Jarvis had been trying to be exactly that: a butler. He'd answered the door in the hotel room, and had tried to help with the blazer, but Mr. Stark seemed to have disapproved of both actions. Now Mr. Stark had left with Captain Rogers, and Jarvis would be spending the evening on his own with nothing to do.

_Nothing to do_ was a new and bizarre idea to Jarvis. He _always_ had something to do. The house needed maintaining, Mr. Stark had half a dozen full-time projects, and there were always a few extra tasks if he had computing cycles to spare. When Dr. Strange had torn him from the circuits that morning he'd been in the middle of several things, including rendering a new design for the suit gauntlets, monitoring the San Andreas Fault, and running the sprinklers. In the hotel room earlier, he'd found he didn't want to sit still – he had to move around and _do_ things, even if he wasn't actually accomplishing anything. Now, confronted with the idea of an evening alone with nothing to occupy him, he already felt a similar restlessness.

"Wow," said a woman's voice. "Does he always talk to you like that?"

Jarvis turned his head. Miss Windham was sitting further up the bar. How had he not noticed that earlier? Perhaps it was because she'd changed out of her red suit into jeans and a floral t-shirt, which made her blend in rather than stand out. That was another thing Jarvis was noticing about how humans thought: so much of the input seemed to get filtered before it even reached his consciousness.

"Does he?" she asked.

Jarvis did not understand her question. "Talk to me how, Miss Windham?"

"Like you're _five_," she said. "_Go back to the room and stay out of trouble._" She shook her head. "You're a grown man."

Jarvis hadn't seen anything wrong with the order. Mr. Stark knew that he was having a difficult time with this body, and staying in the hotel room and out of trouble seemed like a good idea. What else did Miss Windham expect him to do? He took refuge in sarcasm, pointing out, "that's how Mr. Stark always talks to _everyone_."

She grinned. "True," she said. There was a clink as the bartender, apparently assuming that the men had only stepped away for a moment, set Mr. Stark's martini and Captain Rogers' soft drink on the counter. Miss Windham got up and moved to what had been Mr. Stark's stool. "No sense letting this go to waste," she said, picking up the martini glass. "You want one?"

"No, thank you," said Jarvis. One thing he was definitely not going to try was alcohol: he'd seen entirely too much of what it did to Mr. Stark, and he had no intention of allowing _himself_ to behave in such a way. "I have to go back to the hotel room."

Her eyebrows quirked. "You're just going to do what he says?"

"I always do," said Jarvis.

"Suit yourself." She shrugged. "Have a good evening."

"Thank you, Miss Windham, I will," he said. It was not the first lie Jarvis had ever told - he'd lied on several occasions, but only when Mr. Stark had asked him to. It was, however, the first lie he had ever told entirely of his own volition.

* * *

A lot of things had gone wrong that day. Sleeping in and then finding his AI transferred into the body of a filthy, naked Englishman hadn't been a great start, and it had never gotten much better – but Tony was willing to forgive today _everything_ if he could just be on time to meet Pepper. And, by sheer determination – plus the promise of a ludicrously big tip for the limo driver – there he was, promptly at 6:15, waiting outside the main Stark Industries building with an armful of flowers.

Pepper stepped through the revolving doors with her nose in a folder of papers, and didn't see Tony until she nearly walked right into him. She stopped short, looking at him as if she wasn't sure what he was doing there.

"You thought I forgot, didn't you?" he asked, beaming.

"You told me to cancel everything today," said Pepper.

"I didn't mean _that_," Tony said. "I meant business stuff. And Iron Man stuff. Not the _important_ things." He gave her the smile that had melted the knees of dozens of women before her.

But one of the things that made Pepper so amazing was the fact that she was utterly immune to things like that. Her knees remained perfectly solid and she, practical to the last, said, "I wish you'd been more specific. I'm not dressed for it." She glanced down at her conservative skirt suit. "Can you give me a minute to change?"

"Is that all it'll take?" Tony asked with a raised eyebrow. "One minute?"

That finally got a smile out of her. "Can you ask them to hold our table?"

"Will do," he promised.

It definitely took Pepper more than a minute to get ready, but still not as long as most of the women Tony had dated. She reappeared looking absolutely stunning in a powder-blue dress that brought out her eyes and made her hair look redder, and Tony couldn't help but grin as he took her arm to escort her to the limo. In her towering heels she was a bit taller than him – once upon a time, this had been one of the reasons he hadn't considered her potential girlfriend material. But that was just one among many ways in which past-Tony had been an idiot. His day was most definitely looking up.

She smiled back at him as he held the limo door for her, and then her face fell sharply as a voice from inside the car said, "good evening, Miss Potts."

"Hello, Captain Rogers," she replied, surprised, then looked at Tony for an explanation.

"Fury told him to take a vacation," Tony explained. "I'm showing him around. I thought he could join us for dinner."

"I see," said Pepper, and in that moment Tony realized that things weren't looking up at all. Instead, they were headed sharply down, with a swirling motion and a flushing sound.

But there was nothing for it now. He gestured to the interior of the car and smiled. "Shall we?"

"You look lovely, Miss Potts," Steve offered as Pepper got in. The words were fine – it was the situation that was awkward.

"Thank you, Captain Rogers," she replied, settling down beside him. Tony got in last and shut the door, and Pepper asked him, "are you feeling better?"

"You mean my arm?" Tony clenched and unclenched his fist. The shoulder twinged, but it would be fine by tomorrow. "It's a little sore, but I'll live."

"No, I don't mean your arm," said Pepper.

Tony frowned. "So what _do_ you mean?"

"I mean the phone call you made this morning," she said. "You wanted to know when Dr. Strange left, and then you told me..."

"Oh, _that_!" said Tony. "There's nothing wrong with me, Pepper. That really happened. After we eat I'll take you to the hotel room and you can have a look at him, okay?"

Pepper said nothing.

"I'm serious, Pepper," he insisted. "Why would I make up something like that?"

"He's telling the truth," Steve said. "I've been with them all afternoon."

"Really?" Now Pepper suddenly looked like she might be willing to believe it, and Tony felt a little resentful of the fact that she trusted Steve more than she did him.

"He actually kind of looks like you," Tony put in. "He's tall and skinny with reddish hair."

"It's mostly the colouring," said Steve.

Pepper frowned. She didn't say anything, but Tony saw her glance down at herself, and quickly tried to amend what he'd just said. "You're not bad-skinny," he said. "You're good-skinny. You know, uh, slender." He rubbed the back of his neck and wondered, not for the first time, why it was that he could seduce Maxim models and Vanity Fair reporters in two sentences, and yet the one woman he'd realized he really _wanted_ could reduce him to an embarrassing mess. "Can we talk about something else?"

They continued to make remarkably uncomfortable chit-chat the rest of the way to the restaurant. Pepper was still annoyed and Steve clearly regretted being there, so it was mostly up to Tony to do the talking, and nothing he said seemed to help. When they arrived, the restaurant staff had been expecting a party of two, not three, and they had to wait twenty minutes for a table. Tony was doubly glad he'd left Jarvis behind.

A female usher finally seated them and gave them their menus, and Tony tried once again to get everybody talking. "So how was your day?" he asked Pepper. That seemed safe enough.

"Busy," she said. "We've been having trouble with the server all day, and I had to send the men from Disney home. They weren't happy about it."

"Disney?" Tony frowned. "What guys from Disney."

"The ones buying the rights to make an Iron Man movie," she reminded him patiently. "You're the only one who can sign those over to them, you know."

"We're selling those to _Disney_?" Tony wasn't sure he liked that. "We're not going to end up with a G-rated Iron Man movie, are we?"

"I was in a Disney movie once," said Steve.

Pepper shook her head. "You decided you wanted to be a role model for young people, remember?" she asked.

"Yeah," said Tony, "but I fight terrorists. That's not exactly a G-rated job, Pep."

"It was actually one of those shorts they play _before_ the movie," Steve said. "Part of my War Bonds campaign."

"They're not gonna give me a cute animal sidekick, are they?" asked Tony. "Because that's a deal-breaker, right there. No cute animal sidekicks. And I won't sing. You've heard me sing, Pepper, and I'm _not_ going to do that to the children of America."

Pepper rubbed her forehead. "Disney does things besides cartoons, Tony."

"I had to record lines for it," said Steve. He seemed aware that he was talking to himself, but soldiered ahead regardless. "I thought it would take a couple of hours, but it turned out to be all day. They kept having me to do the same lines over and over. And you know what? I just realized I have no idea if they ever finished it. I, uh, left, before I found out."

"Check YouTube," Tony told him.

"Another thing," Pepper said. "You got three phone calls from Balthazar Windham. Something about you being in his daughter's room?"

"What?" asked Tony. He'd barely _spoken_ to Dido Windham that day. There was no way her father could be implying... "Oh, her _hotel_ room," he realized. "That wasn't my fault. That was the room they gave me. Can we talk about something a little more pleasant?"

"You asked me how my day was," said Pepper. "The representatives from the Seismological Institute went home disappointed, too. You know you'd promised them an update _months_ ago."

Tony turned to flag down a passing waiter. "Hey!" he said. "Can we see a wine list?"

Wine was a safer topic. They chose one, and managed to make some slightly _less_ uncomfortable chit-chat by asking Steve how he was getting along in New York. He seemed to be adapting fairly well, all things considered – he said he was looking for a place to stay outside of the rooms SHIELD had provided, and was thinking about getting a job.

"I don't know what kind of a job I'd like," he admitted, "but I hate sitting around with nothing to do." Tony could sympathize.

Then the food arrived, and everything went downhill again as Steve asked, "hey, did you leave Jarvis anything for dinner?"

Tony saw Pepper glance up at him – yeah, he was definitely going to have to take her to the hotel and have her _meet_ Jarvis. "He never said he was hungry," he replied. That was a weird thought, Jarvis being hungry... especially when he'd never mentioned it even though, as far as Tony knew, all he'd eaten that day was half a muffin.

"Maybe he doesn't know what being hungry feels like, though," Steve said.

"I'm sure he would have said _something_," said Tony. "I mean, he made it pretty clear he doesn't like wearing clothes."

Pepper looked over one shoulder as if searching for a way to escape.

The food was excellent, but Tony couldn't remember the last time he'd been this eager for a date to be over. When the waiter finally brought the check, Pepper put a final cap on the terrible evening by announcing that she would get a cab back to her apartment in Los Angeles.

"Wait!" Tony protested, "you have to come back to the hotel!"

"Not tonight, Tony," she said. "You have a guest, I've got a lot to do tomorrow, and if you're still going to be out of..."

"That's not what I meant," he said. Damn it, _why_ couldn't he keep his foot out of his mouth tonight? "I meant you need to come and meet Jarvis. Then you can see that I'm not crazy and maybe we can start working out a solution to this."

She sighed. "Fine."

The only thing that could have made the evening more uncomfortable at this point, Tony thought, was if they ran into Dido Windham in the hotel lobby. He was actually a bit surprised that it didn't happen. They made their way uninterrupted up to the penthouse suite, only to find that the door wouldn't open. When Tony inserted his card key, there was only a red light and an unhappy beep.

"Well, that's no good," he said. "Just wait here, I'm going to call somebody up here and..."

"The card is upside-down," said Pepper.

Tony glanced down at the card. "Oh, right. Actually, I just realized that as you said it." But there was no saving face at this point. He just turned it over and unlocked the door. "Jarvis!" he called out. "Still up?"

He expected to hear the familiar _welcome back, Sir_, but the only reply was the sound of the television: Jarvis, it turned out, had fallen asleep on the sofa. He'd discarded all of his clothing except his shirt, which was unbuttoned – Tony quickly scooped his jacket off the floor and tossed it over the sleeping man's upturned buttocks. When he looked at Pepper again, he found her standing there with her face completely unreadable. The last time he'd seen that closed-off expression, there'd been a box of strawberries in his lap.

"Well, here he is," he said. "I'll wake him up for you, and..."

But her patience had just reached its utter end. "I'm going home, Tony," said Pepper, and turned to say goodbye to Steve. "It was nice seeing you, Captain Rogers. Will you be in California for long?"

"At least a week," he replied. "I should probably head back to my motel now, actually. Thanks for dinner, Tony."

"Yes, thank you," said Pepper.

"You're welcome," was all Tony could say.


	5. Chapter 5: Where Stark Is

After saying good night to Miss Windham, Jarvis had taken the elevator back up to the room, where he stood just inside the doorway and looked around. Housekeeping had cleared away the remains of their early afternoon brunch, and the tailors had cleaned up after themselves before leaving. The entire suite was neat and tidy, and the beige hotel décor was dull and not particularly appealing. It was a place that almost _wanted_ its occupants to be bored.

Jarvis frowned. The _room_ wanted its occupants to be bored? What kind of a thought was that? A room had no desires. It had no _mind_. The people who'd _designed_ the room had wanted it to be inoffensive and easy to clean, and had probably not expected anything terribly exciting to happen there, but to think of the room _itself_ as somehow challenging him to find something to do... that was _absurd_.

Humans did tend to think that way, however. They even had a word for it: _anthropomorphism_, the attribution of human characteristics to things that did not possess them. Was it a bad sign that after only twelve hours in a human body, Jarvis was already tempted to do it himself? Or was that just an inevitable by-product of the hardware he was running on? He didn't know, and had no idea how he might determine an answer. It wasn't as if he could just run a diagnostic.

But because the room did _not_ have any intelligence or opinions, it couldn't object if Jarvis explored it. He'd begun to do so earlier, but had stopped because his ill-fitting borrowed clothes became all the more uncomfortable when he moved around. Now there was no-one to complain if he weren't dressed, so he discarded his trousers and jacket – keeping the shirt just in case Mr. Stark returned unexpectedly – and began looking around again.

There were several rooms in the suite and he inspected them all thoroughly, opening every drawer and cupboard to learn where everything was: if he knew where things were kept, he'd be able to keep doing at least _one_ of his normal jobs by helping Mr. Stark to find what he needed. Unfortunately, the suite contained very little that was likely to be of any importance. There was extra soap and a variety of other supplies in the bathroom. A single book in one of the bedside tables turned out to be a copy of the New Testament, which Mr. Stark would have no interest in. The equipment that had been brought from the house was stacked in a corner, waiting to be unpacked, but Jarvis did not touch it. He didn't know how Mr. Stark would want things arranged here.

The only real objects of interest he found were in a locked cabinet under the television, which turned out to contain a variety of coffees and candy bars – and those were of less potential interest to Mr. Stark than they were of immediate interest to Jarvis.

All he'd eaten that day was a few mouthfuls of a muffin in the early afternoon. Jarvis knew that humans were supposed to eat several times per day – although Mr. Stark often didn't bother – and the food had certainly looked and smelled appealing. Even after he'd figured out how not to choke on it, however, Jarvis had found the sensations of chewing and swallowing so odd that he'd decided to put off eating for a while. Now, smelling the rich aromas of the coffee and chocolate, he found he was unwilling to wait any longer. His mouth had filled with saliva, and something inside him, which had been feeling uncomfortably empty all afternoon, made a hopeful-sounding gurgle. It didn't take him long to make up his mind.

Brewing coffee wasn't difficult. One of the appliances that had run off JARVIS' systems was the coffeemaker in Mr. Stark's workshop, so he was familiar with the theory. Doing it with fingers, measuring out the grounds and filling the receptacle with water from the bathroom sink, was quite a bit more complicated than simply activating a machine, and he ended up spilling coffee grounds on the table and floor. He scooped these up as best he could with his hands and threw them away.

With the coffee underway, Jarvis turned his attention to the candy. Mr. Stark often ate candy bars when he didn't want to stop work for an actual meal. They weren't exactly optimally nutritious, but for the moment they were the only edible Jarvis could find, and having smelled them, he now felt too hungry to wait for something better. He tore one open and broke off a piece. It was far denser than the muffin, and required more effort to chew. It was also much sweeter, and when he focused on that, rather than the muscle movements that had felt so strange to him earlier, it was not at all unpleasant.

Once the coffee was ready, Jarvis poured himself a cup and found that it, by contrast with the candy, was extremely bitter. Despite its appetizing scent, he had to add quite a bit of sugar to make it palatable.

It was probably unreasonable for Jarvis to feel as pleased with himself as he did, but he _had_ just completed a task he'd never been designed for, and that must count as an accomplishment. He sat down on the sofa with his candy and his coffee, and tried to decide what to do next. Mr. Stark had suggested he watch television. That did seem to be something humans could occupy themselves with for hours on end, though Mr. Stark himself usually only had it on in the background while he worked. Where was the remote control?

"Are you enjoying yourself?" asked Dr. Strange.

Jarvis sat up with a start. He managed not to spill his coffee, but only by dint of dropping the candy bar so he could steady the mug with both hands. When he looked around, he found the sorcerer standing next to the stacked boxes of Mr. Stark's equipment.

Or was he? There was something wrong, something vaguely unreal, about the figure, but it was impossible to identify what. Jarvis had an odd suspicion that if Dr. Strange had chosen to appear in this manner in the workshop yesterday, the computer's sensors would have been unable to detect him.

"Mr. Stark has been trying to contact you," said Jarvis.

"I know," Dr. Strange replied, inclining his head.

"Where have you been?" Jarvis asked.

"I go where I'm needed," the sorcerer said. "In fact, I'm still there – I'm not really in the room with you. You seem to be getting along well."

"I would beg to disagree," said Jarvis. "Have you come to change me back?" Mr. Stark would be relieved.

But Strange said, "No. You have to be where you're needed, too."

"Where is that?"

"Where Stark is."

Jarvis frowned. "You're being deliberately mysterious," he pointed out. "Mr. Stark does that, too, and I've never appreciated it."

"Then you should tell him so," said Dr. Strange.

"He knows. He does it anyway." Jarvis was beginning to realize that this would be a very complicated conversation. The polite thing to do would be to invite Dr. Strange to make himself comfortable. "Would you like some coffee? It's fresh."

"No, thank you, I can't stay," said Strange. "As I said, I've gone where I'm needed. I don't know when I'll have the opportunity to return, but I promise I won't forget about you. You may not want to mention to Stark that I was here – I think he'd be a bit upset." He turned around, and then he was gone. He didn't exactly disappear, it just somehow became obvious that he'd never been there in the first place. Jarvis looked around the room, half-expecting to see the sorcerer reappear someplace else, but there was nothing.

A few moments passed in which Jarvis found it very difficult to form a coherent thought. The first one he managed was the realization that Dr. Strange had not been telling the whole truth when he'd said this transformation was meant as a 'learning experience' for Jarvis. He'd had something else in mind, but was reticent to say what it was.

Something hot stung Jarvis' wrist: he looked down and found that his hands were shaking, and coffee had slopped over the side of the mug. He quickly wiped the bottom on his sleeve, the way he'd seen Mr. Stark do in his workshop, and set the cup down on the table so he could think without distraction – a thing that was still far more difficult than it should have been. Dr. Strange had said that Jarvis would have to be where he was needed, which was where Mr. Stark was. Clearly, right now he was not fulfilling that requirement, and yet there'd been no particular urgency in the magician's voice. On the contrary, it seemed he had chosen that moment to deliver his message precisely _because_ Mr. Stark was not present. He couldn't be referring to something imminent.

Humans did seem to enjoy speaking in riddles. Jarvis couldn't imagine why. It was impossible to come to proper conclusions without all the relevant data.

The one thing Dr. Strange had stated openly was his belief that Mr. Stark would be upset by this visit, and Jarvis knew he was right about that. Mr. Stark would complain that Strange was toying with him, and Jarvis couldn't help but agree. If there were some danger encroaching, something Mr. Stark needed protecting from, then Jarvis wanted to know about it in detail. If there were some end in sight to this bizarre ordeal of being forced to occupy a human body, he wanted to know about _that_, too. Not to mention he would have loved to know what aspect of this he was apparently 'getting along well' at. However proud he might have been, he doubted it was making coffee.

All this thinking got Jarvis nowhere, and eventually he must have fallen asleep.

Jarvis knew a number of things about sleep. He knew it was absolutely essential, although there was no known reason why. Humans normally spent six to ten hours asleep every day. Mr. Stark liked to claim that he didn't need as much as most people, but when he didn't sleep, he became irritable and had difficulty thinking. Jarvis also knew that during sleep, humans and other animals _dreamed_: they experienced a series of imagined sensory impressions that probably served some neurological purpose, although there was no known reason for that, either. And he knew that a sleeping organism was only minimally aware of the outside world – a small disturbance sometimes would not wake them. With Mr. Stark, it sometimes took quite a _large_ disturbance, particularly if he'd been up late the night before.

What Jarvis did _not_ know was how the state was achieved. Many of the things humans did required physical action: washing and eating, for example, he'd been able to figure out fairly quickly, because over years of monitoring Mr. Stark's house he'd seen them done hundreds of times. Sleep was altogether more mysterious. When Mr. Stark went to sleep, he lay down on a soft surface and shut his eyes, but Jarvis knew that wasn't enough. People could appear to be asleep when they were really awake, or in rare cases could appear to be awake when they were asleep. The difference was apparently a subtle one.

He'd found himself thinking about this intermittently throughout the day. Human bodies needed sleep: going without for an extended period had far worse physical and psychological consequences than mere irritability. What if Jarvis couldn't figure out how to do it? Would Mr. Stark be able to teach him?

Jarvis had not expected it to be something his body took care of on its own, like breathing. But the last thing he remembered doing that evening was wanting to shut his eyes as he idly flipped television channels. The next thing he was aware of was Mr. Stark calling his name.

"Jarvis! Up and at 'em! Big new day!"

Jarvis blinked at the ceiling. He knew he ought to say something in reply, but he felt muddled, unable to think clearly. Upon realizing he had no idea what time it was, he tried to query the atomic clock in Fort Collins, but was unable to do so... and then he remembered the events of the previous day.

"Yoo hoo!" Mr. Stark snapped his fingers in front of Jarvis' face. "Anybody in there?"

"My apologies, Sir," said Jarvis. He sat up stiffly, rubbing his eyes – they itched – and couldn't stop himself from taking a deep breath, which he realized was a yawn. "It would appear that I am not a 'morning person'."

"No shame in that," said Mr. Stark. "Since there's still no word from Dr. Strange, I'm gonna take Steve surfing today. I figured I'd better wake you up and tell you where I'd be. Here." He tossed Jarvis a small black object, which turned out to be a cellular phone. "Keep an eye on this – I'll call you if I need you."

"Thank you, Sir," said Jarvis. Some sort of crust had formed at the inner corners of his eyes while he slept – he brushed it away with his fingers. "How was your dinner with Miss Potts and Captain Rogers?"

"Don't ask," Mr. Stark said. "Anyway, I'm meeting Steve in a few minutes, so if you want something to eat..."

Jarvis had rarely, if ever, interrupted Mr. Stark, though Mr. Stark often interrupted _him_. Now, however, he suddenly felt as if he'd missed vital information, and wasn't willing to wait for Mr. Stark to finish before asking for clarification. "You're leaving, Sir? Immediately?" Something was wrong with that... there was something Jarvis needed to do before Mr. Stark could leave again. Something _important_.

"I'm not gonna sit on my ass in this hotel room all day," said Mr. Stark. He said something else, as well, but Jarvis missed it as he suddenly recalled his conversation with Dr. Strange.

_You have to be where you're needed, too._

_Where is that?_

_Where Stark is_.

That was it! Or was it?

Had that really happened? Now that Jarvis thought about it, he could half-remember a number of other odd things that had seemed to go on between Strange's visit and his awakening. There'd been rose bushes growing all over Mr. Stark's house, engulfing it and cracking the walls; Mr. Stark falling unconscious in the Iron Man suit and plummeting out of the sky, with no Dr. Banner to catch him; Miss Windham figuring out why Jarvis was familiar to her and reacting with hysterical laughter. None of those things could have been real, and the memories of them seemed to slip away all the quicker the harder Jarvis tried to hold onto them. They must have been dreams. Could his conversation with Dr. Strange have been a dream, too?

No, it couldn't have – there was the brown stain where he'd wiped the bottom of his coffee mug on his shirt.

"Jarvis?" asked Mr. Stark. "You okay?"

Jarvis shook his head to bring himself back to the present. "I'm sorry, Sir, my mind was elsewhere." He'd never had to say that before: Jarvis' mind had always been able to be in as many places as it needed to. "If you're going out, I'd like to accompany you."

That seemed to come as a surprise to Mr. Stark. "You would?"

"Yes, Sir. I don't want to sit in this hotel room all day, either." Jarvis stood up. "I'm not accustomed to having nothing to do."

A pang of sympathy flitted across Mr. Stark's face – then he quickly averted his eyes. "Right, well, it's not a nude beach, Jarvis. Let me make some phone calls." He turned around and pulled a second cell phone, no doubt newly purchased, out of his pocket. The idea that Mr. Stark had already been out of the room, bought items, and returned all while Jarvis slept was deeply unsettling. "Hey, that reminds me," Mr. Stark said, "did anybody call last night?"

"No, Sir."

Mr. Stark was visibly disappointed. "Nobody?"

"The phone did not ring," said Jarvis. Technically, Dr. Strange could be said to have called, but that didn't count.

"Damn," sighed Mr. Stark, disappointed rather than angry. "All right, sit tight, I'll see about finding you something to wear. You can't go to the beach in your new suit."

"Of course not, Sir. I'd also like something to eat, if you don't mind – though I still don't think I like the idea of eggs." It was hard to say what it was he found distasteful about them. He simply knew that they were not a thing he wanted to put into his mouth.

"The breakfast menu's on the table there," Mr. Stark pointed to it with one hand while dialling the phone with the other. "Help yourself."

"Thank you, Sir," said Jarvis. If Dr. Strange had done this to him because he needed to be _where Stark is_, then that was where he'd be.

It was only a few minutes later, after he'd placed his own phone call to room service, when Jarvis suddenly realized _he'd lied_. When Mr. Stark had asked him if anyone had 'called', he had been specifically interested in the presence or absence of Dr. Strange. Dr. Strange had been there, but Jarvis had chosen not to mention it. _He'd lied to Mr. Stark_. Jarvis had never done that. He'd never even _imagined _doing that.

"Sir?" he asked.

Mr. Stark was paging through a newspaper. He looked up. "Yeah?"

Jarvis swallowed, and felt suddenly cold, though he didn't think the temperature of the room had actually changed, as he realized that he could not admit to it. If he did, he would only encourage Mr. Stark to discard him - if Mr. Stark would have been upset that Dr. Strange had been there when he was not, how much angrier would he be to learn that Jarvis had lied about it? "What time is it?" he asked instead.

"Oh. It's, uh..." Mr. Stark checked. "It's nine-forty-two. It's on the phone I gave you," he added.

"Of course," Jarvis said, "thank you, Sir." He would let himself get away with it this time, he decided, but he was not going to do that again. Mr. Stark would have no use for a computer who lied to him.


	6. Chapter 6: Telling Lies

Tony had told himself that things were going to go better today. For starters, he had a working alarm clock that woke him up nice and prompt at eight AM. For another, he was not going to spend today stressing over things he couldn't change. The situation existed, and nobody could do anything about it until Dr. Strange deigned to pop back out of whatever ether he'd vanished into. Therefore, Tony was taking Steve surfing.

Jarvis wanting to come along was a bit unexpected, but there didn't seem to be any reason to say no – and it would probably be mean to just leave him alone in the hotel room all day. Besides, Tony was honestly a bit curious what Jarvis might do once they got out into the world. He seemed to be handling the whole mess pretty well, all things considered, but maybe that was to be expected. After all, Jarvis had been programmed to put up with Tony's bullshit. Pepper was living proof that somebody who could take that could take anything.

Getting Jarvis into some clothes would be considerably easier today, too. Now that the tailors had taken his measurements, Tony could just call a shop and have them send over a pair of khaki shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. Feeding him seemed to go better, too: he chose his own breakfast – no eggs, Tony noticed – and while he still ate like he thought things were going to explode in his mouth, he didn't seem nearly so put off by the very idea of it. Tony supposed it was like people said about obstinate kids: they'd eat when they got hungry enough. People said that, right?

The first hiccough in the day came when, after calling to warn Steve that they were running a bit behind, Tony turned on the television. Lo and behold, there was his house on the morning news, with the headline at the bottom of the screen: _Stark Abandons Computerized Home Following Systems Crash_.

The reporter was standing on the deck of a boat a ways offshore. "According to the grapevine," he said, "Stark's home AI crashed and burned yesterday morning, forcing him out of the house."

"Who told them that?" Tony demanded. "Did Pepper tell them that?" That was low. It hadn't been _that _bad a date, had it?

"I don't know, Sir," said Jarvis.

"I wasn't talking to you," Tony growled at him.

The reporter continued, "two Iron Man engagements for later this week are confirmed cancelled, fuelling speculation that Stark has also lost control of his weaponized suits. As rumours fly, Stark Industries stock has already taken a dip, and is expected..."

Tony turned off the television and called Pepper.

"Of _course _I didn't tell them!" she said. "I'm trying to find out who did and when I do I'm going to throw something at them! What are you planning on doing today?"

"We're going surfing," Tony told her. "Me, Steve, and Jarvis."

"Steve, Jarvis, and _I_," she said. Maybe it had been that bad a date – Pepper only corrected Tony's grammar when she was _really _annoyed. "I need you to stop by here at some point today, preferably before noon. The guys from Disney are coming back and you have got to sign those papers."

"Tell them I'm still thinking about it,' said Tony.

"They're in pre-production, Tony," Pepper said. "They've got it cast. Literally the only reason they haven't started filming is because they need your signature."

"Really?" asked Tony. "Who's playing you?"

Pepper sighed. "I'll tell them you'll be here at eleven."

Once Jarvis had eaten and was properly dressed – although he didn't look any more impressed with casual clothing than he'd been with business wear – Tony dragged him down to the parking lot. Steve hadn't arrived yet, but upon stepping out through the revolving doors Tony found himself looking at the back of a woman in a red suit, her dark hair up in a tidy bun. Was that... yes, when she turned her head a bit he recognized her profile: it was Dido Windham. She was looking at her phone, obviously waiting for somebody or something. Tony made a sharp left turn, hoping she wouldn't notice them if they stayed close to the wall.

Of course, he couldn't get that lucky – but when she spoke, her voice was surprisingly cheerful. "Oh, good morning!" she said, as if talking to a friendly acquaintance instead of a loathed ex-boyfriend. "Get into any trouble last night?"

"More than I planned, actually," Tony replied, with a sideways look at her. What was up with the attitude shift?

"I wasn't talking to you," said Miss Windham. She put her phone in her purse, then approached them, smiling brightly – but sure enough, she wasn't looking at Tony. Instead, her gaze was directed past him and a couple of inches up. She was talking to Jarvis. "You look much happier today," she said.

"Do I?" he asked.

Miss Windham nodded. "I didn't think you were a suit man – at least, not _that _type of suit man," she added, and for reasons Tony could not have begun to fathom, she _winked_. "I've never seen anybody look so uncomfortable in a tailored suit as you did last night."

"I find them rather confining," Jarvis confirmed.

"Me too, honestly." Miss Windham rolled her shoulders in her own blazer. "Unfortunately, I can't exactly meet suppliers in t-shirts and engine grease."

Tony frowned. "Since when do you work with machines?" he asked.

Miss Windham did a double-take, staring at him as if he'd just said something impressively stupid. It was Jarvis, instead, who actually replied.

"Miss Windham has a degree in aviation engineering," he said, as if Tony were supposed to remember the credentials of somebody he'd dated years ago. "She designs jet engines for the Windham Aerospace company."

Her smile reappeared. "Did you google me after we talked last night?" she asked.

"No, Miss Windham," said Jarvis. "I remember you from when you and Mr. Stark were seeing each other."

"Well, I'm glad _somebody _was paying attention," she said.

Tony had a sarcastic reply all ready, something about how she'd known he was like that when she got into the relationship, but it evaporated as he realized what Dido had said _before _accusing him of ignoring her. "Wait, you two talked last night?" He looked from her to Jarvis and then back again, confused. "When was that?"

"After you and Captain Rogers left to meet Miss Potts, Sir," said Jarvis.

"He means after _you _told him to go wait in the hotel room like a good puppy," said Dido. "Which he did, by the way. I was impressed – I wouldn't have thought you were the type to inspire that kind of loyalty." She shrugged, apparently dismissing it as one of the mysteries of the cosmos. "I thought Mr. Jarvis and I could share a drink and some Tony Stark stories, but he wasn't interested."

"I don't think he'd tell stories about me," said Tony.

"They might differ in the details from the versions you'd tell," Jarvis observed.

Miss Windham giggled. "I like this guy," she said.

Behind her, a taxi pulled into the hotel lot and the driver honked the horn. Miss Windham turned and waved to him.

"There's my ride," she said, unshakably cheerful – Tony suspected she was doing it on purpose. "You boys have fun!"

"Yeah, thanks, I don't think I can take much more _fun _in my life right now!" said Tony as she walked away, her red Gucci pumps clicking on the pavement.

She didn't appear to hear him: the cab door shut behind her, and off she went. Tony shook his head and took a wary look at Jarvis – and it must have been his imagination, but he could have sworn he caught the tail end of a smug smile. What did that signify? Did Jarvis even understand what had just happened?

"Was she... _flirting _with you?" asked Tony.

"I wouldn't know, Sir," said Jarvis, perhaps still smiling a little. "That's not a form of interaction I'm programmed for."

Tony nodded, relieved. Of course not. "She doesn't actually like you, you know," he said. "She's just hoping she can pump you for information."

"That was my working hypothesis," Jarvis agreed. "You've no cause to be jealous, Sir."

"What?" asked Tony. "Who said I'm jealous?" What would he even be jealous _of _in this situation? "Dido Windham is old, old, _old _news. I'm just worried about what she might be after. I'm not jealous." In context, the fact that she'd chosen to flirt with Jarvis instead of shout at Tony wasn't a reason for jealousy at all... it was just weird.

"As you say, Sir," said Jarvis.

Tony told himself that it was only ten-thirty. There was still plenty of time for today to get better.

* * *

Dido could put on a serene face when she wanted, especially when it stood a chance of pissing off Stark and possibly getting closer to his mysterious employee, but she was very nervous indeed about meeting Huang. She'd done her best not to let her father see it, either, but she was pretty sure he knew – because if Dido had reason to be nervous about this, it was Balthazar Windham's fault. Last time Huang had been in the States, it had been Balthazar he'd spoken to, and although Dido had never found out exactly what happened, she'd seen more than enough of the result. This meeting was a tentative try at reconciliation between Windham Aerospace and Ao Guang Resources, and there was a heck of a lot riding on Dido's ability to schmooze.

It was an effort for her not to pace up and down the terminal as she waited at LAX. She'd resisted the urge to get a cup of coffee, too, since that would only make her antsier. Instead, she focused on standing very still in arrivals, hands behind her back so nobody could see her fiddling with her fingernails. It would be fine, she told herself. Her father was far, far away in Montreal, where his paranoia couldn't ruin everything. God, she'd be glad when he retired.

The blue and white Air China plane seemed agonizingly slow as it taxied to the terminal. Another forever went by while airport personnel connected the tunnel and people began to disembark. For a moment Dido was irrationally terrified that Huang had simply changed his mind and decided not to come at all – but then there he was, all six feet six inches of him towering over the crowd of passengers. Dido put on her best smile and stepped forward, glad she was wearing red. Not only was it her confidence colour, it was also impossible to miss.

"Good morning, Mr. Huang," she said. "Welcome to Los Angeles. Did you have a good flight?"

"Good morning, Miss Windham," he replied. His English was excellent, with only the tiniest trace of an accent. "It is lovely to see you again – and I'm sorry, but I fear there's no such thing as a good flight." He took her offered hand and gave it a single quick shake, then let go again. Dido did her best not to be offended: as far as she'd ever been able to tell, Huang was like that with everybody. She suspected he was a bit of a germophobe.

Then he said something surprising: "I'm rather disappointed that your father couldn't come meet me himself."

"He would have," Dido lied, "but he has to be in Canada this week. He's in Montreal until tomorrow, and then he's going to Vancouver. My schedule was a bit more open." At least, that was what Balthazar had said to his administrative assistant. Dido's father seemed to believe that because Dido was interested in what the company actually _did_, rather than just pushing paper, that she must have plenty of spare time. She'd been unable to disabuse him of the notion. When the owner of the company said he needed his daughter to go somewhere, nobody liked to argue about it. "Besides," she added apologetically, "after the breakdown in communications last year, he thought things might go smoother if he kept to the sidelines."

Huang looked hurt. "It saddens me that he thinks so little of me," he said. "Please assure him that I bear him no ill-will whatsoever. It is water under the bridge. Forgotten. And I would be more than pleased to see him before I must leave again."

"Wonderful." Dido smiled. Maybe at some point she could try to wheedle the whole story out of Huang – she'd never had any luck getting it from her father. For now, though, since things seemed to be going well, she decided she'd better get the embarrassing part of this conversation out of the way as quickly as possible. "I'm afraid I have to apologize about one thing, though," she said. "We've had some trouble with your hotel reservations. Since your flight got delayed, I came yesterday to hang on to the hotel room for you, but somebody else had already claimed it."

"Ah." Huang gave a knowing nod. "Mr. Tony Stark."

"Oh, you heard?" asked Dido.

"I saw the news report on my flight," he said. "They are saying his home computer crashed?"

"That's what he told me," Dido agreed. "I tried to talk to him about it yesterday, but he wouldn't give up the room. There's nothing quite like Tony Stark to ruin your day," she said, maybe a little more ruefully than was professionally appropriate.

"He has ruined a number of mine," said Huang. "I am reassured to know, however, that even the mighty Tony Stark can have difficulties with his computers."

"That's exactly what Dad said," Dido told him with a smile.

She could tell that Huang was putting a lot of effort into being pleasant, and it made Dido very glad that she'd insisted on not abandoning the business contact in favour of stalking Stark's employee. Huang might not bear the Windham family any meaningful ill-will _now_, but it would probably have been very different if he'd found himself at the airport with nobody to meet him. Now, she would just have to keep Huang entertained while finding more opportunities to speak to Mr. Jarvis. The next few days were going to be a pain in the ass, but hopefully a rewarding one.

"I'm really looking forward to working out this deal, Mr. Huang," Dido said, as they headed for the car she'd hired – when travelling on her own Dido preferred to save money where she could, but a taxi wouldn't do for somebody the company needed properly buttered up. "I've been reading the material you sent us on the Ao Guang seafloor mining initiative, and I think it's a project with a lot of potential."

"Thank you, Miss Windham," said Huang. "I'm sure you and your father will both be surprised by how much progress we've already made. In fact, if you think there's any possibility he could drop by for a day or two, I have some things I would like to show him."

If Dido had heard this statement from him an hour earlier, without having had any polite conversation to preface it, she would have been about eighty-five percent sure that Huang was referring obliquely to a bomb. As things were, she was closer to forty percent sure, and that was enormous progress. "I'll talk to him about it," she promised, but she was lying again. Balthazar wasn't coming within miles of Huang if she could help it – not when things had gotten off to such a good start.

* * *

Jarvis knew that Mr. Stark was most likely correct: it was improbable in the extreme that Miss Windham's interest in him was personal. He was merely an unknown quantity which she wanted to evaluate – possibly while taking advantage of an opportunity to annoy Mr. Stark in the process. This was slightly disappointing for reasons Jarvis could not quite articulate, but hardly surprising. He wasn't terribly confident in his understanding of human attractiveness, but judging by the way people responded when he went without clothing, his new body was not notable in that regard.

In spite of that, though, the attention Miss Windham had paid him was immensely flattering. Jarvis had particularly enjoyed the fact that she'd chosen to speak to _him _while Mr. Stark was right there. Nobody had ever done that before. Most people seemed to assume that Jarvis would only respond to his creator unless instructed otherwise, which wasn't true, and those who did speak directly to him tended to word their questions and commands as if talking to a child. This had never bothered him – it was just the way things worked.

But Miss Windham – admittedly only because she didn't know who he was, but still – had brushed off Mr. Stark and spoken to Jarvis. And she'd spoken to him as an adult, taking honest, though dubiously motivated, interest in his replies. Nobody had _ever _done...

No, that wasn't quite true: Dr. Strange had done it. He'd tried to engage Jarvis in a philosophical discussion of the nature of consciousness. Jarvis hadn't quite known what to make of it. He was a machine programmed to recognize patterns – at some point in the last two or three years, one of the patterns he'd recognized was himself. Whether his consciousness was in any way different from a human being's had no bearing on the jobs he did, and was therefore of no real interest to him. Strange had become annoyed with Jarvis' refusal to take the conversation seriously and the rest, as Mr. Stark would have said, was history.

But talking with Dr. Strange had not been as satisfying as talking with Miss Windham. Maybe it was because Mr. Stark had given Dr. Strange permission to speak with JARVIS before retiring to his workshop, while nobody had granted such permission to Miss Windham. In a sense, then, it really _was _the first time anyone besides Mr. Stark himself had actually talked to Jarvis just for the sake of _talking_. They hadn't even discussed anything of real significance, and yet Miss Windham's attention had made Jarvis feel important. He couldn't keep himself from smiling about it, just a little.

Captain Rogers arrived rather late, explaining apologetically that he'd met some children who'd recognized him and wanted their picture taken with him. "Then they wanted to know if I had a Facebook account," he said, "and now they expect me to get one so that they can tag me in the picture."

Mr. Stark scratched the back of his neck. "I'm not sure Facebook is ready for you, Steve," he said. "But here, I've got a working phone now." He pulled it out of his pocket and brought up the screen. "Since my normal one won't work until we can fix Jarvis, I bought one of those pre-paid ones. Here's the number."

"Thanks." Captain Rogers had a notebook out, and started to write the number down as Mr. Stark read it out.

"Steve," said Mr. Stark, "put the pen away and program it into your contacts. Do you know how to do that?"

Captain Rogers looked offended. "Of course I do. I just like to keep things written down somewhere because I've already had one of these things 'crash' on me and I lost everything in the memory." Once he had the number on paper, then he took out his own phone to add it to his contact list. "I still think it's ridiculous how people just go around carrying a phone _all the time_. What do you do if you don't _want _to get phone calls?"

"I ignore them," said Mr. Stark. "You got your phone, Jarvis?"

"Of course, Sir," Jarvis said. Perhaps he should put Mr. Stark's new number, and a few others, into its memory... but all that information was already in his database and he wasn't likely to forget it.

"Great." Mr. Stark began punching a number into his new phone. "Let's get the car."

While they waited for the valet to return with the Land Rover, it suddenly occurred to Jarvis that Mr. Stark did still have some backups; the _old _ones, made before the incident with Obadiah Stane. If those still existed – which they might not. Jarvis had no idea how _thorough _Dr. Strange might have been about removing him from the house systems – they could be used to get Mr. Stark's old phone working. Four-year-old backups were less than idea, but certainly enough to run the basic house systems and perhaps even some of the earliest Iron Man suits.

But he said nothing. The very thought of mentioning the backups made him feel cold again, as he had when he'd realized he'd told a lie about Dr. Strange, in a way the California sunshine couldn't seem to help. If the backups were viable, then Mr. Stark would have no reason at all to keep Jarvis around in his current format. Jarvis had no illusions that Mr. Stark was particularly attached to him emotionally. He'd seen what happened to objects in the workshop that had outlived their usefulness: they were repurposed, recycled, or destroyed. Jarvis had always known that the same was likely to happen to him one day. It had never bothered him before. Now the idea was suddenly terrifying.

It wasn't selfishness, he decided, as the valet pulled up, nor was it a lie: he wasn't lying by not answering a question Mr. Stark had not asked. Besides, Dr. Strange had told Jarvis that he needed to be _where Stark is_, which he couldn't do if Mr. Stark decided to get rid of him. By keeping the backups to himself, he was obeying Dr. Strange's instructions and looking out for Mr. Stark's safety as he always had. That wasn't selfish. That was his job. The looming black terror of being discarded had nothing to do with Jarvis himself and everything to do with serving his purpose as best he could in his current situation.

He wasn't lying to Mr. Stark. On the other hand, he wasn't entirely sure that he wasn't lying to _himself_.


	7. Chapter 7: Captain America Learns to Sur

Although it was still early in the day, Surfrider Beach and the Malibu Pier were already crowded, and Jarvis found himself almost overloaded with new sensory input. All around him were things he'd experienced before only via images from television and internet. The sun was brilliant both in the sky and where it glittered on the ocean, warm on Jarvis' face and glaring into his eyes in a way that pixels just couldn't simulate. There was a cacophony of sound: vehicle engines, music, waves breaking and gulls croaking, the strange new roar of the breeze in his ears, and of course the holidaymakers talking and shouting. Curiously, Jarvis found that he was unable to pick individual conversations out of the hubbub: instead, the voices all ran together into one steady background hum that was identifiable as human speech, but not intelligible as words and meaning.

"Here we are, gentlemen!" said Mr. Stark, as he shut the engine off. "Let's hit the waves!" He opened the Land Rover's door and swung himself out, and Jarvis noticed another thing that he really should have paid more attention to.

"Your arm appears to be much better today, Sir," he observed.

Mr. Stark gave it a shake, then kneaded at the shoulder – the scar of his escape from the Ten Rings was still visible. "It wasn't that bad to begin with," he said. "I just wanted to scare Velasquez. Come on, let's go find Rob."

Robert Bolongan taught surfing classes at the Pier: Jarvis was aware of him, but since Mr. Bolongan had never been to the house, he could not be said to have actually _met _him. Mr. Bolongan turned out to be a tall, sturdily-built Polynesian man with bleached-blond hair and a shark's tooth necklace, and he greeted Mr. Stark with a fist bump.

"Tony Stark!" he said. "I haven't seen you in ages – been too busy saving the world?"

"It's not gonna save itself!" Mr. Stark replied. "In fact, I'm on a very important mission right now, and you can help." He grabbed Captain Rogers' arm and dragged him forward. "This is Steve Rogers, Captain America, and he has never been surfing!"

Bolongan shook his head. "We'll have to do something about that," he said. "You a good swimmer, Captain?"

"I can swim if I have to," Captain Rogers replied, looking a little embarrassed, "but I've never actually taken lessons. I had asthma when I was younger..."

"Right," said Bolongan. "Don't you worry, we all spend nine months swimming, your body just needs to be reminded. We'll have you swimming like a fish in no time!" he clapped Captain Rogers on the shoulder.

"Sir," Jarvis said. "I don't know how to swim."

Mr. Stark looked up at Jarvis, frowning. "No... I don't suppose you would," he said. "You know what? Not today. I need you to do something else." He fished his new cell phone out of his pocket and tossed it to Jarvis, who fumbled a bit but managed to keep it from falling in the sand. "That's the number I gave to Pepper and Fury, so if either of them call, come and get me, okay?"

"I think I'd like to learn," Jarvis insisted. _Swimming _was an idea that could never have been applied to him before yesterday, and hopefully wouldn't apply for very much longer, but in the mean time he was curious what the water would feel like. The shower had been hundreds of tiny, hot droplets pelting him – a shock at first, but nice when he got used to it. What would the ocean be like? Besides, too, there were the unnecessarily mysterious words of Dr. Strange – _where Stark is_. He didn't want to risk getting too far away.

"No, Jarvis," said Mr. Stark. "Not today."

That was an order, and Jarvis - unlike his creator - knew when to quit. "Of course, Sir."

Jarvis supposed that if he were sitting and waiting for a phone call, he was at least doing something useful – that helped a little, though not terribly much. While the others went to change their clothing and rent surfboards, Jarvis found a place to sit down at the edge of the beach area. There, he pulled his shoes and socks off – of all the clothing humans wore, shoes were by far the most constricting and annoying – and dug his feet experimentally into the sand. It was warm and surprisingly dense, clumping to itself and sticking to his skin. He picked up a handful of it and rubbed it between his fingers, surprised to find that he could almost feel each individual grain brushing over the ridges of his fingerprints.

Dr. Strange had said he thought JARVIS needed a learning experience, but sitting here with a handful of sand, Jarvis wasn't sure if he were learning anything or not. Certainly he was dealing with a lot of unfamiliar input, but none of it could be _quantified_. There were no numbers he could assign to the texture of sand. A minute ago he hadn't known what it would feel like, and now he did, but if he'd had to encode that information in such a way that it could be sent to another computer, he would have been at a loss. Could such a thing really be called _data_?

Would he be able to remember what sand felt like after Dr. Strange undid his transformation? Was it possible to remember input from a sense – touch – that he did not have and was not designed to process? Sand, or a hot shower, or the smell of coffee...

_Mulling something over_ had always struck Jarvis as a strange concept. The phrase suggested thinking about something without coming to any conclusions, but that was ridiculous – coming to conclusions was the entire purpose of thinking. He realized, however, that _mulling _was exactly what he was doing now, thinking about questions without even knowing _how _to answer them. Apparently, like anthropomorphism and lying, it was just something humans did.

It was about noon when Mr. Stark's cell phone rang.

Jarvis brought up the display. Because the phone was new and cheap, with only a minimum of programming, it showed only the caller's number, but it was a number Jarvis knew. He put the phone to his ear and said, "Hello, Miss Potts."

"JARVIS!" she said, relieved. "Oh, good, he must have gotten the house working again!"

"I'm afraid not, Miss Potts," he said, and realized that he had no idea how much she knew about this turn of events. Mr. Stark had said he was _going _to tell her, but now that Jarvis couldn't monitor his communications, he had no way to know whether he had actually done so. "Has Mr. Stark explained to you..."

"He told me a story, yeah," Miss Potts interrupted. "What actually... no, never mind," she decided. "I don't care right now. Where is he?"

"Mr. Stark has brought Captain Rogers to the Pier for a surfing lesson." Jarvis could see them from where he was sitting. Mr. Bolongan was talking to Captain Rogers – as near as it was possible to tell, he appeared to be using his hands to demonstrate some basic fluid dynamics.

"Of course he has," she sighed, and there was a soft click. Because he didn't have a direct connection to the phone line, it took Jarvis a moment to realize that she'd disconnected – and then he found it rather annoyed him. Even Mr. Stark always properly excused himself from a conversation. It would not have taken Miss Potts very much longer to say 'goodbye'.

He frowned at the phone. Mr. Stark had asked to be informed if anyone called, but in this particular situation there would be little to tell him: Miss Potts had not been specific about why she was calling. He didn't even have any way to determine where she was calling from, and therefore couldn't predict what she might decide to do about it.

Jarvis shoved the phone back in the pocket of his shorts. Useless again. How he hated feeling useless.

* * *

Tony had every faith in Steve's _physical _ability to learn how to surf. Steve was a goddamn superhero in a far more real sense than Tony could ever be: after some of the stunts he'd pulled, staying upright on a surfboard ought to be no problem. What Tony _did _doubt was Steve's ability to have a little fun in the process. A man who tried to surf without having fun ended up looking like an idiot.

Rob knew this, too, and after an explanation of how the sport worked he put his hands on Steve's shoulders and said, "now, _relax_, Captain. Remember, we're here to have fun."

"Why does everybody assume I don't know how to have fun?" Steve grumbled.

"I guess you're just that transparent," said Tony.

They were on their way out into the surf, listening to Rob explain how to spot a good wave, when they heard footsteps splashing towards them. It was Jarvis, clearly finding wading to be a lot more effort than walking. This close to shore the waves had pretty much died out, but he still stumbled every time the ghost of one lapped around his knees.

"Sir!" he said. "Miss Potts is here!"

"What?" asked Tony. "Where?" He looked around. "You mean _here _here?" He couldn't spot her. "Wait, on the phone this morning, didn't she say something about making an appointment for me?"

"I don't know, Sir," said Jarvis. "I don't have access to your schedule at the moment. I do know, however, that her car just pulled into the parking lot, and I thought you would appreciate if I warned you."

Tony looked up – sure enough, there was Pepper's sleek white Audi. The more he thought about it, the more he was sure she'd wanted him to do _something_ today, but he couldn't for the life of him remember what it was. He groaned as he realized he was about to be backed even further into the doghouse.

"Wait here, guys," he sighed. "This probably isn't going to be pretty." He handed his surfboard to Jarvis, and went to meet her.

Tony could tell Pepper had already spotted him from the moment she climbed out of the car, tall and elegant in her black suit dress. She started towards him, demonstrating in the process her astonishing ability to walk in high heels on any surface: Tony had seen her do it on a grating, he'd seen her run in stilettos on a tile floor, and now she strode out onto the sandy beach without a second thought. How did she do that?

He was brought back to reality by the realization that she hadn't come alone. She was being followed by two men in business suits. Both of them seemed to be having more trouble walking on the soft sand than she was.

Despite his having told them to stay put, Steve, Jarvis, and Rob had all followed Tony back to shore. There was thus an attentive audience for his impending humiliation as Pepper stopped ten feet away and, poised and attractive as ever, looked him coldly in the eye and said, "good afternoon, Mr. Stark."

Tony noticed that one of the men was carrying a leather portfolio with the Disney logo embossed on it. Oh, _shit_, that was right. He'd agreed to come, hung up the phone, and promptly forgotten entirely. "All right," he told Pepper. "I admit it, I forgot. I've had a lot on my mind the past couple of days..."

"I told you on the phone _this morning_ that we had to meet the representatives from Disney at eleven," said Pepper.

"I know! I know!" he protested. "I do know my own faults, and one of them is that I'm not very good at keeping track of stuff like that. I'm used to JARVIS doing it for me and I'm a little lost without him. I'm going to try to get better about that. Since everybody's here, let's just get the paperwork out of the way..."

"That was the idea," Pepper agreed. She looked back at the two men, and the taller one, a portly African-American with a moustache that belonged on a prime-time cop drama, stepped forward to shake Tony's hand.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Stark," he said. "Jim Greenwood. I'm a great admirer of yours! We all want World Peace, but it's a rare man who's brave enough to take it into his own hands."

"Thanks," said Tony. "Hey, let me introduce my friends." Pepper still hadn't properly 'met' Jarvis, had she? He could take care of that, too. "This is Robert Bolongan, my surfing instructor. And I'm sure you've heard of Steve Rogers – Captain America!"

"Captain America!" Greenwood was delighted. "An honour! Jim Greenwood, I work for the Walt Disney Company's legal department."

"I was in a Disney movie once," said Steve.

Greenwood gave a polite but slightly confused smile in response, then turned to Jarvis. Pepper watched this with a worried expression, and Tony wondered if she recognized Jarvis as the same man she'd seen last night, sleeping on a hotel room sofa with his ass in the air. "And this is..." Tony began, but then drew a blank. What was it he'd decided to call him? It had 'assistant' in it...

"I'm Mr. Stark's Senior Technologies Assistant," said Jarvis, stepping in before it could become obvious that Tony had forgotten. "Edward Jarvis."

"How do you do, Mr. Jarvis," said Greenwood.

Tony grinned and tossed an arm around Jarvis's shoulders. "Wouldn't last a day without him!"

Pepper looked startled, but for the moment she didn't seem inclined to actually say anything: as always, her attitude wasbusiness first. She stood back while Greenwood's companion, a short, thin man in Buddy-Holly-style black-rimmed eyeglasses, stepped forward with the leather portfolio. "Here are the documents, Mr. Stark," he said, holding them out.

Tony balked. "I don't like to be handed things."

"Allow me, Sir." Jarvis took the portfolio and opened it. The papers waiting for Tony's signature were on the right – on the left, a number of black and white Hollywood headshots were tucked into a pocket. Greenwood offered a pen, but Tony was more interested in the photographs. He pulled them out for a look and began flipping through them.

"The cast can't be properly finalized until after the papers are signed," said the shorter man.

"Good," Tony said, "because this guy doesn't look a thing like Rhodey." He took a look at the rest. That must be the actress for Pepper, this would be Obadiah, and... he stopped, stared for a moment, then asked, "is this actor going to be playing _me_?"

"Yes, Mr. Stark," said the short man.

"Isn't he a drug addict?"

"He's been to rehab," said Pepper.

Tony shook his head. "I don't think that's the example I want to set for little kids."

"You told me last night you didn't want this to be a children's movie," Pepper reminded him.

"Yeah, but they're gonna watch it anyway," said Tony, who knew about and was rather proud of his popularity with children. Their unbridled enthusiasm for Iron Man delighted him. "_Mystery Science Theatre 3000_ made jokes about this guy. They said he was like a black hole, because he was a_ collapsed star_. What episode was that?" He looked at the other people present for help.

"I don't know," Pepper said.

"Season Eight, Episode Ten," Jarvis said. "_The Giant Spider Invasion_."

"Yes! That's the one!" Tony nodded. "Look it up!"

Pepper sighed heavily.

"I was wondering," Steve put in. "There was this Captain America war bond cartoon you guys were going to make back in 1942 – did it ever get finished?"

"I wouldn't know," said Greenwood. "Try YouTube."

"Tony," said Pepper, "just _sign the papers_."

Pepper's patience was little short of epic, but now it was clearly at its utter end. Defeated, Tony took the pen and signed on the dotted line.

"Thank you, Mr. Stark," said Greenwood. "And may I say again what a pleasure it was to meet you and Captain Rogers, and your friends of course," he added as an afterthought.

"Yeah, just make sure my action figure looks good," Tony told him. He closed the dossier and Jarvis gave it back to Greenwood's companion. "Hey," Tony added, as something else occurred to him. "Isn't that actor sort of _short_, too?"

Pepper fixed him with another frosty glare. "Will that be all, Mr. Stark?" she asked.

"That will be all, Miss Potts," he replied meekly.

She began to walk away, with Greenwood and his friend in tow. Steve shook his head, and Rob asked, "what's up her butt?"

"She's been mad at him since he invited me along on their date last night," said Steve.

Rob stared at Tony, all sympathy having vanished from his face. "The hell did you do _that _for?" he asked.

Tony decided he had to fix this. "Pepper!" he called out. "Hey! Wait up!" He ran after her and reached to grab her arm. "Pepper, look, can I at least prove to you I wasn't drunk when I told you about Jarvis? Jarvis!" he called, waving. "Come here!"

Pepper stood watching while Jarvis approached. "Good afternoon, Miss Potts," he said formally. "Please don't be angry with Mr. Stark. As you know, he has trouble keeping track of his schedule, and for the moment my ability to help him with it is... somewhat compromised."

"See?" asked Tony. "_See_? I told you. This is what I've been dealing with the past couple of days, okay?"

She looked from Tony to Jarvis and back again, then swallowed. "When's my birthday?" she asked Jarvis.

"The thirtieth of April," he replied promptly. "Mr. Stark has always given you an annual allowance to buy yourself a gift from him. He hasn't tried to amend this arrangement yet," he added, with a glance at Tony.

"I've been thinking about it," Tony lied. Now that he and Pepper were properly an 'item', he probably should actually buy her birthday and Christmas gifts. He'd have to remember that date. April thirtieth. _April thirtieth_.

"How many Pollocks were in our art collection?" asked Pepper.

"Five," said Jarvis. "Three of them were painted in the Springs neighbourhood of East Hampton, which Mr. Stark refers to as the artist's 'Spring Period'. The other two were painted for the Federal Art Project."

Pepper tried one more time. "What's Tony's favourite ice cream?"

"Rum raisin, Miss Potts."

She was silent for a moment. Tony's first question had been _how_, but Pepper's was, "_Why_? I mean, what was he trying to accomplish?"

"Dr. Strange said I needed a 'learning experience,' Miss Potts," said Jarvis.

Pepper looked him over, eyes wide. "I, um," she said, and seemed to search for words for a minute before settling on, "he's taller than I pictured him."

It had never occurred to Tony to imagine an appearance for JARVIS before this had all begun. Now he realized he would never again be able to hear the voice without picturing the face that went with it. "How did you picture him?" he asked.

"I don't know, sort of like Alfred from the old Batman show," Pepper replied with a shrug. "I always figured that was what you'd had in mind."

"I didn't really have anything in mind, not in that sense," said Tony. He reached out and took Pepper's hand. "Look, I understand it sounded crazy. Yesterday was just a giant mess of bad timing and you are absolutely right that I shouldn't have brought Steve along last night. I don't know what to say about that, other than it seemed like a good idea at the time." He smiled hopefully. "I'll tell you what, let's do it over. We'll go out again, just you and me, and pretend the whole thing never happened."

She sighed. "Tony," she said, "I'm sorry I didn't believe you. I should know by now what your life is like. And it's not that I don't appreciate the romantic gestures, because I do. But if this relationship is going to work then we _both _have to put some effort into it. That extends to our professional lives as much as our personal ones. You have to take a little more responsibility for yourself."

"That's what I'm doing!" said Tony. "I'm doing it now!"

"You always say that," Pepper pointed out, "but nothing ever changes!"

"Well, something's definitely changed now," Tony said. "For starters I don't have JARVIS to remind me of your birthday anymore! April third?"

"Thirtieth," said Pepper and Jarvis in unison.

"See? Maybe this can be a learning experience for me as much as him!" Tony took a deep breath and tried again. "I'm sorry. I mean that. I guess I've been freaking out about this a little more than I let on." That was probably true – he'd thought he was dealing with the situation pretty well, but every time he stopped and actually thought about the fact that he had no access to his house, no access to his suits, he just felt completely helpless. Tony Stark did not like feeling helpless, and it was that reality that he'd spent the last day or so desperately trying to hide from. "We'll go out tonight, and tomorrow I'll show up for work like there's nothing wrong in the world, okay?"

Pepper relented. "Okay," she said.

"Hey," he added, hoping to get a smile, "I've been working on a surprise for you! Haven't I, Jarvis?" He glanced back, and got a brief nod. "It wasn't going to show it to you just yet... actually, I can't show it to you at all until Jarvis is back where he belongs, but maybe I can give you a sneak peek."

"Should I be worried?" asked Pepper, but there was a bit of humour in her voice now. Finally!

"You'll love it," Tony assured her. "I'll pick you up tonight – same time, same place, no Steve." He kissed her cheek, and they parted with smiles on both their faces. Tony reclaimed his surfboard from Jarvis and rejoined his friends, feeling very pleased with himself. "Everything's okay," he announced. "We're going out again tonight – I'm sorry, Steve, this time you're not invited."

"Good," said Steve.

Rob had gone to get sodas for everybody, and tossed a can to Tony. "If you want my advice," he said, as the four men sat down on the edge of the boardwalk, "get her away from the fancy stuff. Just take her for a burger and a movie or something. How often does she do that? The most romantic thing you can do for a woman is something she doesn't usually get to do."

"Something as unlike yesterday night as possible," Steve agreed.

"I would recommend _not _trying to talk about work," Jarvis said, joining them. "Miss Potts deals with a lot of stress and won't want to be reminded of it."

Tony looked sideways at them. "So how are you three able to understand women?" he asked. "Rob's gay, Jarvis is a computer, and Steve is... Steve."

"Women aren't _aliens_," said Rob, rolling his eyes. He then looked at Jarvis with some interest. "He's a robot?"

"No," Tony said. "It's a long story."

"Not particularly long," said Jarvis. "It merely..."

"It's weird," Steve finished for him.

"I was going to say it requires a certain amount of context," Jarvis said.

"_Weird _will do," said Tony.


	8. Chapter 8: Sunburn

There was a PowerPoint presentation. There was _always _a PowerPoint presentation.

PowerPoint presentations were somehow emblematic, in Dido's mind, of just why she'd taken an interest in the _practical_ parts of her father's business, rather than following him into management. Technology fascinated her; making the hundreds of parts involved in a jet engine all work together to carry a plane and a payload into the sky was _interesting_. It was a challenge, a puzzle to solve, and she was always proud to see the practical result when a new model was tested. She probably have been willing to kill a man for the chance to take apart one of Stark's Iron Man suits and see what made it tick. Powerpoint presentations were the exact opposite of all that. They were ideas as expressed by people with absolutely no interest in the nuts-and-bolts realization of them.

Like so many other PowerPoint presentations, the one Huang had put together about his project involved graphs, bullet lists, and most of all, artist's conceptions: slide after slide of computer-generated images depicting the Ao Guang seafloor mining complex as it would look in full swing. The renderings were fairly impressive, and Dido was sure Huang knew what he was talking about,but there was one thing she really couldn't help noticing. It seemed that Huang, like so many other men in high-tech industries – Justin Hammer came prominently to mind – had a clear case of Stark Envy.

It was obvious in the design of the Deepsuits the miners in the images were wearing: they were inescapably Iron-Man-inspired, right down to the power source located in the chest. Not to mention the underwater explosive he called the Niu Wa – the way it broke into multiple projectiles to blow down a whole hillside was strikingly reminiscent of old videos of Stark's Jericho Missile tests in Afghanistan. Everybody wanted their stuff to look like Tony Stark's. It was so much easier than coming up with something of their own.

She was getting a better appraisal of Huang himself, too. Balthazar Windham claimed he could tell a man's character from the moment he met him, but Dido preferred to watch people for a while and see what they revealed about themselves when they thought she wasn't looking. Huang, she decided, really was working hard to mend the rift between Windham Aerospace and Ao Guang Resources, but he was ill at ease and tended to explain things to Dido as if she were a child. She suspected he was a little insulted that the boss' daughter had been sent to meet him instead of the boss himself, and that probably made him suspicious that Windham would not be fully committed to any future partnership. She was going to have to try to do something about that.

Huang's discomfort was most obvious in the moment when his presentation was interrupted: his cell phone went off, startling him quite badly, and he apologized profusely before retreating into a corner of the room for a brief but angry-sounding conversation in Cantonese. Dido understood very little of that language, and assumed at first that he was upset at the interruption. Then, however, she heard her father's name, followed by the word _Vancouver_. More likely, then, he was ranting about Balthazar being in Canada instead of coming to speak with him personally. If so, he really was a lot more upset than he'd let Dido know.

She was also pretty sure she heard the name_ Tony Stark_.

Huang ended the call and apologized once again. "I'm very sorry, Miss Windham," he said. "I should have turned my phone off. I know it's terribly impolite to leave somebody waiting during a conversation they can't understand."

"I'm used to it. It's just like when Dad talks accounting," said Dido lightly, but his remark struck her as curiously probing. Was he trying to make absolutely sure she didn't speak the language? What had he said that she wasn't supposed to hear?

The presentation finished without further interruptions, and Huang let the screen go blue and waited for Dido's response.

"It looks very promising," she said. A couple of years ago she would have thought some of his concepts were awfully far-fetched, but it had been a hell of a couple of years in the world of high technology. "Dad will be thrilled, and I think we can offer you some solutions for the issues you mentioned with your submersible engines." Marine propulsion wasn't Dido's speciality, but given a little time to work on it, she could probably come up with something to make a pump-jet engine more efficient under higher pressures. Maybe she should do some research on it tonight. "A miniature version might work for your Deepsuits, too."

"We're exploring several options," Huang said, "but I would be happy to see what you might come up with. The Deepsuits are one of the centrepieces of this project."

Of course they were, thought Dido. They were the thing he could point to and say _see? I'm just as clever as Tony Stark._

Huang coughed. "When you speak to your father," he said, "could you express my disappointment that he's not here? If he could stop by, even for a day or so, I really would like to speak to him in person."

"I'll bring it up," Dido said.

But once again, she did not. When she called her father late in the afternoon, she told him that Huang's project looked good. Balthazar told her to close the deal then, and immediately changed the subject to talk about what he was really interested in.

"Did you talk to Stark's friend at all?" he wanted to know.

"Only a little," said Dido.

"A little? Sweetheart, I told you: I _want _this guy."

"And I told _you_, Dad, I'm not going to just leave the whole Ao Guang thing hanging so I can chase after a man who may or may not be who we think he is!" she said. "I talked to him about five or ten minutes, because that was all I could manage. Tonight I'll see if they're still in the hotel – I overheard a couple of security guards grouching about Stark. Maybe if I tip well they'll bend some privacy rules for me."

"What did you find out?" asked Balthazar.

Dido bit her lip. She'd had a difficult time sorting out her impressions of Edward Jarvis. "I'm not sure I'd call him Stark's _friend_," she said. "They're not on a first-name basis: he calls Stark _Sir_. Stark orders him around like a dog, and he sits and stays and fetches like one."

That wasn't what Balthazar had wanted to hear, and it really wasn't what Dido had expected to see, either. She'd figured somebody who helped Tony Stark to be Iron Man would be someone he was close to, somebody he trusted to keep a secret. Then again, Dido knew well enough that Tony Stark didn't have what she would have considered normal relationships. Maybe he really did hang such things on professional, rather than personal, loyalty.

"Any idea what he does?" asked Balthazar.

"I'm pretty sure he's _some _kind of techie," Dido replied. "He obviously hates wearing suits and he doesn't seem very comfortable in social situations – although he's very polite, and Stark actually lets him get away with a bit of lip." She frowned. "It's really hard to gauge their relationship, actually. I'll try again if I can catch him away from Stark."

"That's my girl."

Dido winced at his condescending tone, but decided it wasn't worth getting upset over. Besides, there was something she wanted to ask her father: she'd been hoping to get the information from Huang, but trying would only make him more uncomfortable and she doubted now that she'd find an opening to ask. Huang was a man who kept his secrets. "Dad," she said, "what exactly happened that made Huang so upset?"

"Oh, it was nothing important," Balthazar replied. "You told me he said it was water under the bridge."

Dido persisted. "I think he assumes that I already know." She wasn't sure if that were true or not, but she could tell he'd been avoiding the subject. "If he says something, I want to know what he's talking about. Come on, Dad. You can't send me out here to do this and not tell me what I need to know."

She heard her father's breath roar in the microphone as he sighed. "There was a bit of a misunderstanding about the sources of some of his equipment," Balthazar explained. "I may have accidentally given the impression that I thought he was swiping our technology to reverse-engineer."

Dido took her glasses off and rubbed the bridge of her nose, resisting the urge to groan out loud. She doubted there'd been anything accidental or impressionistic about it – it would have been an outright accusation, because Balthazar Windham was a paranoid old bastard. No wonder Huang had been angry, and no wonder he was upset now. He'd been hoping Balthazar intended to apologize face-to-face, and then he'd learned that the man would be sending his daughter instead. Fantastic.

"You actually said that to him?" she asked.

"Not in so many words," said Balthazar. "Do you think I _should _fly down there and talk to him?"

Dido thought her father should stay exactly where he was, twelve hundred miles away, and keep his mouth shut. "I don't think that's necessary," she said. "I can handle this."

"Okay, good," he replied, sounding relieved. "Well, just email me those documents you mentioned – and if you do get another chance to talk to Stark's man, take it! At least find out what it is he actually does."

"I'll do my..." Dido stopped and looked up as a pair of familiar figures entered the hotel lobby through the revolving door, accompanied by a third man: a very tall and astonishingly muscular fellow in a brown leather jacket. "You know what? They just walked in. I'll call you back." She pressed the 'end call' button and stood up.

* * *

An hour or so after lunch – hot dogs and French fries, purchased from a cart on the boardwalk – a group of children approached Jarvis and asked him whether he would allow them to bury him in the sand. He wasn't sure whether this request were serious or not, but chose to err on the side of caution and said he would rather they not. They left, disappointed, but soon found a more willing victim: this man lay down on the beach while the children piled sand on top of him and even built a small sand castle on his chest. When this was finished, the man suddenly sat up and growled like an animal, destroying the children's handiwork. They didn't seem offended, though. Instead they giggled and shrieked and cried out, "earthquake! Earthquake!"

Their laughter was oddly infectious. Jarvis found himself smiling broadly as he watched them. He was a little uncomfortable with the realization that this body could do things without his being consciously aware of them: facial expressions were particularly worrisome, because those actually communicated information to others, and he seemed to have no control over them. A lot of the processing, too, took place on a level he could not access. Recognizing Miss Potts' voice on the phone, for example: Jarvis normally identified voices by comparing them to a library of recordings. He had enough processing power that he could do this almost instantaneously, but he'd been startled to find that a human brain was not only faster, but could somehow perform the task without being told to. Jarvis would have preferred to keep track of what his brain was doing.

Shortly after making this observation, Jarvis began to notice that he felt uncomfortably warm. When he touched the skin of his arm, it was hot under his fingers. He didn't remember it feeling like that earlier... perhaps being out in the sunshine had raised his internal temperature? If so, he should probably move to a cooler place. Humans functioned best at thirty-seven degrees centigrade. It only took a small increase to cause serious medical problems.

He found a place to sit in the shade of a tent. That helped him feel cooler overall, as did the purchase of a bottle of cold water to drink, but neither did much for the skin on his arms. Even more worrying, his neck and shins were displaying the same flushing and warmth. Jarvis felt like he should know what these symptoms represented, but somehow he could not come up with the name for it. The information seemed to be hovering on the edge of his awareness, frustratingly just out of reach.

In fact, he was concentrating so hard on trying to retrieve that elusive piece of data that outside stimuli seemed to fade away, and he didn't even notice that Captain Rogers and Mr. Stark had returned until the latter threw a towel at him.

"Jarvis!" he said. "Stop daydreaming! We're heading back!"

"My apologies, Sir," said Jarvis. He stood up – and immediately regretted doing so. Over the course of his afternoon sitting in the shade, his posture had worsened until he was nearly lying down, and when he got to his feet he was nearly overwhelmed by dizziness and sudden headache. He managed not to fall over again, but it was a near thing.

"You okay, there?" asked Mr. Stark, grabbing his arm to steady him.

"I think so," Jarvis said. "I believe it's merely postural hypotension." That was the technical name for the symptoms produced when blood rushed suddenly out of the brain – why could he remember _that_, but not what was causing his skin to feel warm?

Mr. Stark nodded. "Let's go – I gotta shower and get dressed before I pick up Pepper."

Climbing into the Land Rover was still a somewhat awkward process for Jarvis, although he was getting better at sitting down without feeling as if he were falling over. Once settled with his seatbelt on, he brushed the sand off his feet and tried to put his shoes and socks back on – but quickly changed his mind. For some reason, having cloth against the warm areas wasn't just uncomfortable, it was almost _painful_. He set the footwear on the seat beside him and left it there.

When they arrived back at the hotel, Captain Rogers announced that he would like some help with something, and asked whether there were a computer he could use. The hotel in fact had a row of Macbooks in the lobby for its patrons: while Mr. Stark and Jarvis looked over his shoulders, Captain Rogers sat down in front of one and cracked his thumbs.

"Okay," he said. "Everybody's telling me to try this Tube, so let's give it a shot."

"Which Tube?" Mr. Stark asked immediately. "The internet is a whole _series _of tubes."

"What?" asked Captain Rogers.

Jarvis decided to offer instructions himself. "Click on the 'Safari' icon," he said, pointing to it. "There will most likely be a bookmark for YouTube – there it is. Click that."

Captain Rogers obeyed the instructions, and the website popped up. "Okay, I know this. The search bar is here. What should I search for?" he wanted to know. "All these websites have different standards."

"With YouTube, try anything relevant to what you want to find," Jarvis said. "Perhaps _Captain America WWII Animation_."

Captain Rogers nodded and started to enter the terms – and it became immediately obvious that he had never taken a typing class. In his era, typing had been very much women's work, and he hunted and pecked at an agonizingly slow pace. Mr. Stark winced and turned his head, unable to watch, and Jarvis had to fold his arms across his chest to keep himself from reaching around Captain Rogers and entering the keywords _for _him.

Captain Rogers pressed the 'enter' key, and then frowned at the list of results. "It's asking me if I meant _Captain America's Weekend in Amsterdam_..." he began, his cursor hovering over the link.

Mr. Stark reacted so quickly that Jarvis almost missed it: before Captain Rogers had even finished saying the word _Amsterdam_, Mr. Stark had slammed the Macbook shut and then, just for good measure, yanked the power cord out of the wall. Captain Rogers stared at him, confused.

"You don't want to watch that one," said Mr. Stark.

Captain Rogers clearly didn't understand why not. "I brought home prisoners of war to Amsterdam," he said. "They named a tulip after me."

"Trust me," said Mr. Stark. "That's not what the video's about."

Jarvis offered a clarification. "It most likely features an actor playing you in a series of sexual situations with Dutch prostitutes."

"Don't _tell _him that!" Mr. Stark protested.

"You know, believe it or not, Tony, I _do_ know what pornography is," said Captain Rogers.

"You asked if Pepper and I 'fondue'," Tony reminded him, unconvinced.

"The 'fondue' thing was a joke between your father and me," Steve said. "You obviously knew what I meant by it!"

Mr. Stark rolled his eyes, then seemed to notice something behind them. Whatever it was, his expression changed markedly and he quickly leaned forward, pretending to be very interested in something on the counter in front of them. "Guys," he said, "whatever you do, _don't turn around_."

Jarvis meant to obey, but he couldn't help taking a quick glance – and when he did, he saw Miss Windham walking towards them. She began to smile, but then her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open in horror.

"Oh, my god!" she burst out. "You're _glowing_!"

"I'm sorry, Miss Windham?" asked Jarvis.

"You turned around!" muttered Mr. Stark. "Why did you turn around?"

"Look at you!" Miss Windham pulled up one sleeve and held her arm next to Jarvis', and he suddenly realized that his complexion had changed dramatically. The skin in the warm areas had turned an unnatural brilliant pink. "What were you _doing _today?" Miss Windham demanded.

"I was at Surfrider Beach with Mr. Stark and Captain Rogers," he said.

"And you weren't wearing sunscreen?" Miss Windham was aghast.

"Oh!" Mr. Stark took off his sunglasses and looked Jarvis over as if he'd only just noticed he was there. "I didn't even think of that. That's actually a hell of a sunburn you've got there."

_Sunburn_. _That_ was the word Jarvis had been unable to think of. He was relieved it wasn't something serious.

Miss Windham looked exasperated. "That is going to peel like a banana," she said. "I've got some aloe cream in my room. I'll go get it, and you wait _right _there." She poked Jarvis in the chest. "I'll be right back."

Mr. Stark waited until she got in the elevator and the doors closed behind her. Then he took Captain Rogers and Jarvis each by the arm. "We are not staying here," he said.

"Ow!" exclaimed Jarvis, as Mr. Stark's palm touched his sunburn.

"Sorry." Mr. Stark grabbed him by the sleeve instead. "I'll find something for that, but we're going back upstairs. Now!"

* * *

Watching Dido run off, Tony had come to a decision: if he were going to take charge of his life for _real _this time, the first thing he needed was a plan.

Tony was good with plans as long as they were the type of plans that told a person how to build something. Plans that involved real life, on the other hand, were Pepper's thing: she lived and breathed by agendas, schedules, and itemized to-do lists. Tony had never been that kind of organized. His version of a plan was rarely more complicated than "go to party and stay until carried out" or "locate Colombian guerrillas and wreck their stuff". That was enough to start with, and he could fill in the details as he went.

Right now, however, he was starting to realize that the spontaneous approach just wasn't working here. It was time to sit down and _plan_. He needed a plan for finding Dr. Strange. He needed a plan for convincing Pepper that he loved her and he wasn't an idiot. He needed a _better _plan for dealing with Jarvis' current condition than sitting around in this hotel until he could figure out a 'find Dr. Strange' plan. And while he was at it, he needed a plan to avoid Dido Windham, because she just kept popping up and it was really awkward.

That last one, at least, he thought he could handle. After all, he knew what it was she wanted: Dido was obviously trying to make Tony jealous. Why else would she be taking such trouble to pay conspicuous attention to somebody else in front of him? Luckily she didn't know what Jarvis really was, and therefore had no idea that she was wasting her time. Jarvis would never be either intimidated or seduced into telling her any important secrets – and Tony had absolutely no reason to be jealous of him whatsoever. So assuming that Dido wanted jealousy, the way to get rid of her would be to demonstrate that it wasn't working, that Tony was more than happy without her and his pride was not at all rankled by an ex-girlfriend ignoring him.

_That_, at least, was something he knew how to do. He dragged the others up to the hotel room and called room service to send up something to put on a sunburn. Then he made another call.

"Hello?" asked Pepper's voice.

"Hi, Pepper," said Tony. "Uh, listen, I'm having some trouble finding a car..."

"You've got six of them at the house," she pointed out.

That was true – the cars were among the few things that _hadn't_ run off JARVIS. Tony thought fast; he certainly couldn't just _say _he wanted to show her off to an ex. "That," he added, "and my shoulder's acting up again." Even though Pepper couldn't see him, he gave his arm a theatrical shake – then winced as it twinged. The joint had, in fact, been getting stiff towards the end of the afternoon and while it had been a bit melodramatic to insist on having a doctor yesterday, he probably also shouldn't have gone surfing so soon after nearly having his arm twisted off by the security guard. "Instead of me picking you up at the building," he said, "can you come pick _me _up at the hotel?"

"I suppose I could do that," said Pepper. He could tell by her voice that she was humouring him – she probably thought he had a surprise for her. He'd have to think of one... one that didn't involve strawberries. "What should I wear?" she wanted to know.

"Nothing fancy," he said, remembering the advice he'd been given earlier. "We've done enough fine dining. Tonight I have something else in mind."

"We can't stay out too late," she reminded him playfully. "We've both got work in the morning, remember?"

"Yes, Ma'am," Tony promised. "See you soon."

After ending the call, Tony took a quick shower, then threw on one of the hotel's robes and left the bathroom to find that concierge had sent up the burn cream: Jarvis was sitting shirtless and morose on an ottoman, gritting his teeth while Steve rubbed hydrocortisone into the back of his neck.

"You've got another spot down here where your shirt rode up," Steve observed, squatting down to do Jarvis' lower back.

"Thank you once again, Captain Rogers," sighed Jarvis. He looked up and caught Tony's eye – Tony quickly turned away and went to get dressed.

Tony did feel honestly bad about the sunburn. Those weren't any fun, and it could have been so easily avoided. As he'd said, it had simply never occurred to Tony, even when he and Steve were busy smearing down with the stuff, to go offer the bottle of sunblock to Jarvis. Jarvis was a computer: computers didn't need to worry about sunburns. Computers didn't worry about _anything_, although JARVIS had been programmed with a certain amount of concern for Tony's safety.

He was going to have to pay more attention. Jarvis might not really be human, but he had human needs for the moment, and Tony would have to remember that.

Once he'd dressed, Tony poked his head back into the suite's sitting room and asked, "Jarvis? How you doing, buddy?"

"Absolutely terrible, Sir," said Jarvis, who was now putting cream on his own shins and the tops of his feet, while Steve sat nearby looking sympathetic.

"It'll take a few days to clear up," Steve offered. "Just don't scratch it, especially when it starts to peel. Let it come off on its own."

Jarvis nodded and grimaced, although whether at his current pain or in disgust at the thought of his skin peeling was impossible to say. If Tony's much-neglected conscience could have physically poked him with a sharp stick, it would have.

"I gotta go meet Pepper," he said. "You guys can order out, or... no, wait," he said. "Jarvis – put a shirt on and come downstairs with me."

Jarvis made another face. "May I ask _why_?"

"To prove to Dido that I can find my own damn burn cream," said Tony.

Jarvis sighed, but heaved himself to his feet. Steve handed him his shirt.

Then Tony remembered something else. "Oh," he said, "also, Pepper seems to think I have a surprise waiting for her here. You guys got any ideas? Preferably something hard to transport."

Steve and Jarvis exchanged a glance that seemed to involve some telepathic communication. Probably something on the order of _we have mutually had enough of Tony_.

"I suggest a pony, Sir," said Jarvis, with a perfectly straight face.

Tony scowled. "I'm not buying her a pony."

"Girls like ponies," said Steve.

"I believe Miss Potts once said that when she was a child, she wrote to Santa Claus for three consecutive years to request a pony, and never received one," said Jarvis.

"No ponies!" Tony held up his hands. "Fine. I'll think of something myself!"


	9. Chapter 9: You're The Voice

Despite Steve's and Jarvis' refusal to offer any help, Tony did manage to think of a surprise for Pepper, and not a moment too soon. He just barely managed to get it delivered before she arrived. When her car pulled up, he was waiting in front of the hotel with a smile on his face – and a steaming pizza box in his hands.

"Surprise!" he announced, holding up the pizza.

She paused and gave him a wry smile. "And here I thought you were going to show me whatever it was you'd mentioned at the beach."

"Unfortunately, like I said, I need JARVIS back before I can show you that. For now, this will have to do." He opened the box to show her. "We're not going out, we're staying in. I've got a pizza, there's a _Futurama _marathon on TV, and we'll just hang out. See? Pepperoni – that's what the magazines call us, you know. 'Pepperony'." Tony grinned. He hadn't liked the portmanteau at first, but it had grown on him.

"I've seen them," said Pepper. She looked down at her clothing: it was probably the same little black dress as she'd worn to work, but without the jacket and accessorized for evening rather than business. "And here I am in a skirt and heels."

"Aw, that's okay, you look good in anything," Tony joked. He shut the pizza box and extended his arm. "How long's it been since we had a good night in?"

Pepper had to think about it. "A while," she said. "Work's been crazy. Just let me park properly, okay, Tony?"

"Take your time," he told her. "We've got all evening."

Tony was happy to wait for her. He'd stationed Steve and Jarvis inside the hotel so they could text to warn him if Dido Windham decided to try interrupting again, and the result was a classic win-win situation. If Dido didn't stop by, all the better – but if she _did_, she was going to see Tony beaming with Pepper on his arm, and hopefully understand that she would never make him jealous of anybody. And of course, Tony got to spend the evening with Pepper, who was now smiling at him instead of snarling. Things were definitely looking up.

They stayed up, too, for once – but with one small hiccough on the way. _If _she showed up, Miss Windham was supposed to come from _inside _the hotel, after one of Tony's accomplices had warned him. She was _not _supposed to arrive from somewhere out in the parking lot – and when she noticed them, she was _absolutely _not supposed to call out, "hello, Pepper!"

Pepper turned around in surprise. "Dido!" she said. "I didn't know you were in town!" She looked at Tony for an explanation.

He couldn't say he hadn't known she was in town, because Miss Windham would immediately call him out on it. "Well, I figured you two probably wouldn't want..." he began, but Miss Windham had already run up and grabbed Pepper's hand.

"How've you been?" she asked enthusiastically. "It's been ages!"

"Not since the Warhol at Christie's," Pepper agreed, and Tony remembered – Pepper and Dido had something in common. They both loved modern art, and now they were apparently going to stand around and talk about it while he stood there holding a slowly cooling pizza. Fabulous.

"How was your trip to Paris?" asked Pepper. "Did you get to meet Madame Popelin?"

"I did!" Dido grinned. "And you'll never believe what I saw."

"Tell me," said Pepper.

Miss Windham looked around, and then dropped her voice to a whisper. "Don't tell anybody, but I'm almost sure she's got _Odalisque in Garden with Poppies_. It was propped in a corner of her store-room. I tried to take a closer look, but she said it needed restoration and hustled me off."

Pepper's eyes went wide. "That can't be right," she protested. "They found that painting – a man approached me to try to sell it to Tony, and I reported him to the FBI."

"What?" asked Tony. "I didn't hear about that."

"Maybe," said Miss Windham, "but it's not back in the museum yet, is it?"

Tony cleared his throat. "Ah, ladies," he said pointedly.

Pepper looked as if she'd only just remembered he was there. "Oh!" she said. "Sorry, Dido, I'm afraid it's date night..."

"Not a problem, I have to run, too," Miss Windham said. "We should catch up sometime. I hear a rumour that missing Renoir surfaced in Japan last month. Catch you later!"

"Bye, Dido!" Pepper waved as Miss Windham headed inside. She waited until the other woman had passed through the revolving doors, then turned to Tony. "When did she get here?"

"Yesterday morning," said Tony. "She says I stole her hotel room."

"Is that why she's pretending you don't exist?" asked Pepper.

Ah, so she _had _noticed that Dido hadn't looked at Tony, not even once. "That would be why. She was doing it all day yesterday, too." And that was when he realized he'd just let Miss Windham accomplish exactly what she'd set out to: having a nice conversation with somebody else while Tony got ignored – just as she'd done with Jarvis that morning. _Damn _it. "Hey," he said, "why didn't you tell me somebody tried to sell me a Pissaro?"

"Partly because I knew it was either fake or stolen," said Pepper. He braced himself for the second reason to be another complaint about his donation to the boy scouts, but instead she said, "and partly because _Odalisque in Garden with Poppies _is a Matisse."

Tony had no idea what his face might have looked like when she said that, but there was probably an element of 'sad puppy' involved. Pepper laughed and squeezed his arm.

"Don't let her get to you," she said.

"I'm not," he told her firmly. "Not at all. Come on, pizza's getting cold."

As they passed through the revolving door, Tony's new phone beeped. He pulled it out to look at, then quickly shut it off and put it away again.

"Nothing important?" asked Pepper.

"Nothing at all," Tony told her.

It had been a text message from Steve, all meticulously spelled and punctuated correctly, to let Tony know that he'd just spotted Dido at the concierge desk. At least he'd tried.

* * *

When Jarvis saw Miss Windham enter the hotel lobby alone with a smile on her face, he feared that the encounter had probably gone badly for Mr. Stark. He wondered if he ought to go ask, but hesitated to do so – Mr. Stark would not have appreciated the interruption. Fortunately, a few minutes later Mr. Stark himself finally reappeared. He had his pizza in one arm and Miss Potts on the other, and he looked even more enormously pleased with himself than usual.

Jarvis raised a hand – it wasn't a wave, just an acknowledgement of Mr. Stark's success. Mr. Stark saw, and responded with a nod. This attracted the attention of Miss Potts, who smiled at Jarvis, then asked Mr. Stark a question. Jarvis couldn't make out her words, but the reply was, "oh, Steve's looking after him."

_Looking after him_. Jarvis winced: there it was again, that nasty knowledge that he was of no use whatsoever in this form. Why did Dr. Strange's mysterious business have to take so long?

Mr. Stark and Miss Potts vanished into the elevator, and Captain Rogers approached, sketchbook and pencils under his arm. "I'm gonna get something to eat and then find a spot to people-watch," he said. "You got any suggestions?"

"I'm sorry, Captain Rogers, but I'm not very familiar with Malibu," Jarvis replied. "At least, not in a practical sense." He could remember bits and pieces of hundreds of maps and satellite photos, but seemed to have lost the ability to patch them together into anything meaningful. A list of restaurants, for example, was easy to come up with, and he had a good idea what each one looked like and what they served – but he had no idea how to get to any of them from the hotel.

"Oh, right, of course, I should have figured," said Captain Rogers. "Well, Tony told me to make sure you eat. He couldn't remember if you'd had lunch."

At the word 'eat', Jarvis' insides began to gurgle again – the same sound they'd made last night when he'd discovered the stash of coffee and chocolate in the suite. Remembering the smell and especially the _taste _of the food made the gurgling more insistent. Having some supper sounded terribly appealing.

But all he said was, "thank you, Captain Rogers. I did eat lunch, and I'd rather stay in the hotel this evening. I'll find my own supper."

"Really?" asked Captain Rogers, surprised.

"Yes, really," said Jarvis. "I'm perfectly capable of feeding myself." There were an awful lot of things he _couldn't _do, but he'd figured out how to eat, and he rather resented the implication that Mr. Stark considered him entirely helpless.

"Okay," Captain Rogers said dubiously. "You can call me if you need anything. Do you need the number?"

"I have it," Jarvis said. "Thank you, Captain Rogers."

Perhaps, Jarvis thought, he ought to have told Captain Rogers his real reason for not wanting to leave the building: that Dr. Strange wanted Jarvis to stay _where Stark is_ and Jarvis was worried that whatever he was supposed to do, he would miss it if he let Mr. Stark wander off. Maybe Captain Rogers would have stayed to keep him company – because once he left, Jarvis was, again, alone in a hotel with nothing to do. And this time he was in a public place, where he couldn't even make himself more comfortable by removing his clothing.

Eating would keep him busy for a few minutes, but although he was hungry Jarvis found the idea of eating in the hotel restaurant, in front of people, a bit intimidating. As with so many other things, cutlery was much more difficult in practice than in theory. At breakfast that morning he'd tried to use a knife and fork and had eventually given up in frustration. Mr. Stark had watched him over the top of a newspaper as he'd eaten with his hands. He didn't like the thought of a whole room full of people looking at him with that disapproving expression.

He therefore put off supper for a while, and sat down in one of the big leather chairs across from the hotel bar. This was unexpectedly painful, as the upholstery rubbed against his sunburned neck, and he quickly leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees so as to have as little of his body in contact with the chair as possible. What did people _do_, he wondered, when they were alone with no tasks assigned to them?

He knew the answer: they had hobbies. Mr. Stark worked on his hot rods, and Captain Rogers drew pictures. Miss Potts visited museums and art auctions. Colonel Rhodes enjoyed hiking and boating.

Jarvis had no hobbies. He played chess with Mr. Stark, helped with his projects, selected music for him... but those were all part of his job. There was nothing he did purely because he enjoyed it. He'd never needed a hobby. He'd never been bored.

He heard a sound, and raised his head to see a hotel employee standing over him. She offered a glass of some amber liquid.

"From the lady in red," she said, gesturing towards the bar.

Jarvis turned in his seat to look, but he already knew exactly who he would see. Sure enough, there was Dido Windham.

"Hi," she said.

"Hello, once again." Jarvis took the glass from the waitress and set it down on the low table in front of him, as Dido came to sit down opposite.

"You looked like you needed a drink," she explained.

"Thank you," said Jarvis, "but I don't drink alcohol. May I ask, Miss Windham, why you keep popping up? I get the idea that it's not a coincidence."

"I like your accident," she replied airily. "Where were you born?"

"Cambridge," he said.

"Cambridgeshire or Gloucestershire?" she asked.

"Massachusetts," he said. "What's the _real _reason?"

"You're no fun." Miss Windham pouted, but couldn't keep it up for long. There was still something rather satisfying about seeing her smile, as if he'd accomplished something difficult. "All right," she said, "it's half because it annoys the hell out of Stark when people don't pay attention to _him_, and half because it's driving me crazy trying to figure out where I know you from." She looked him over. "And probably a little bit because that sunburn really does look hideous. How can you stand to wear a shirt over that?"

"I'm given to understand that going without is not socially acceptable," said Jarvis. "Mr. Stark was able to find some cream for the burn, and it's less painful now." At least, it had been until she'd mentioned it – now he was thinking about it again, and that made it itch. He reminded himself that Captain Rogers had told him not to scratch.

"That's good," she said. "I'm sorry, by the way – I didn't actually have any aloe for you. I just knew if I offered it, he'd run right off to prove he could find some first." She tilted her head to the right. "How long have you worked for him? For Stark?"

That was an unexpectedly difficult question. There was no single answer. Had Jarvis begun 'working' for Mr. Stark on the day the first version of his software had been activated? Or was it when he'd been installed in the house, taking over a number of tasks that Mr. Stark had used to pay people to do? Or maybe when he'd become fully self-aware, although that was not an event that could be pinned down to a particular moment. He settled for, "many years."

"And you still call him 'Mr. Stark'?"

"I don't believe that's any of your business, Miss Windham," said Jarvis.

She didn't seem discouraged. "Well, you can call _me _Dido," she said. "It's a terrible name, but it's mine. I'm actually named after my father's favourite painting – he's got it hanging in his office," she explained. "It's a 1905 Klimt, six feet square of gold leaf and godawful colours." She shook her head. "So how about you? Is it 'Ned' or 'Eddie' or what?"

That was another difficult question, but instead of having too many possible answers, this time Jarvis had none. He couldn't even lie to her, because whatever name he gave, she would immediately start to call him by it. That would be very awkward the next time she spoke to him in front of Mr. Stark.

Why was he still talking with her at all? Dido Windham was antagonistic towards Mr. Stark in two senses: she was both an embittered former lover and a business rival. The sensible thing to do would be to bid her good evening and find somewhere else to sit. But if he did that, he'd have nobody to talk to _at all_...

She was waiting for an answer.

"I'm afraid I don't know what to tell you, Miss Windham," he said. "I'm just Jarvis."

She didn't believe him. "Nobody _ever _calls you by your name?" she asked. "What about your family?"

"I don't have a family," said Jarvis. "Only Mr. Stark." A moment after saying this, he realized how she would interpret it and quickly moved on. The best thing to do would be to make a joke of it before she could offer any unnecessary condolences. "I'm afraid I make for a rather sad excuse for a human being." That was the truth at least. No hobbies, no family – not even a name.

Miss Windham's eyes narrowed critically. "Nah," she decided. "I've _met _sad excuses for human beings. You're a little... underwhelming, honestly, but I think you can still be saved."

Jarvis might have made a _sad _human, but he was not a _stupid _one. This was hardly casual conversation: Miss Windham was trying to steer the conversation towards a point, and it was quite obvious where the point in question was going to be. Now would be an excellent time to get up and go elsewhere, but instead Jarvis decided to take the bait and see what happened. "I assume I'm meant to ask _who _these sad human beings are?"

"Well, I don't want to go naming names," she said, with a slight nod, suggesting she knew and acknowledged that he was playing along, "but since you asked." Her expression suddenly hardened, and a note of real bitterness crept into her tone. "There's this one guy who is so wrapped up in himself that he doesn't seem the point of talking to other people. He talks to robots instead – and when he _does _talk to people, he talks to them just like they were robots. He talks like he doesn't actually believe there's another person in the conversation. He just wants something to throw his voice at and occasionally hear a 'yes, Sir!' to feed his ego while he..."

Then she abruptly stopped in mid-rant. For a moment she looked startled, and then a smile slowly spread across her face. "That's it!" she exclaimed.

"That's what?" asked Jarvis.

"You!" She pointed at him. "I know who you are:_ you're the voice_! I've never met you, but you provided the voice for Tony's computer! JARVIS! Of _course_!" She picked up his neglected drink and raised it in a mock toast. "I knew he couldn't have built that himself. The smartest man in the world couldn't make something like that all alone. So that's what a Senior Technologies Assistant does, huh? You help him with his computers?" She looked quite excited by the idea.

Jarvis decided the safest answer was, "I'm not at liberty to say."

"That's fine," she said, still smiling. "That's impressive, though. I don't really 'get' computers. I mean, I can fill in a spreadsheet and all that, but the insides may as well be full of pixies as far as I'm concerned. I prefer my machines to have moving parts. Y'know, stuff I can take apart and see what..."

"Miss Windham," Jarvis interrupted. "I apologize, but I don't think I should be discussing this with you."

"Of course not," she agreed. "I'm sure you're under a nondisclosure contract."

"In fact, I don't think I should be talking to you at all," he said, standing up. "Have a very good evening, Miss Windham."

"I understand." She nodded, apparently not bothered a bit. "You, too, Mr. Jarvis."

Jarvis walked away, taking long strides with no particular destination in mind besides out of Miss Windham's general vicinity. He'd realized, halfway through her tirade, exactly why he enjoyed talking to her so much despite knowing that she had an ulterior motive: Miss Windham did not speak to him in the imperative. The only time she'd given him an order was when she'd told him not to move until she returned with the (nonexistent) aloe for his sunburn. Besides that one incident she had, as he'd observed that morning, talked to him as she would to another human being, listening to and playing off his responses.

Mr. Stark, as she'd pointed out, didn't do that. Neither did Miss Potts: most of the time she didn't talk directly to Jarvis at all, and on the beach that afternoon she'd talked _around _him, speaking to Mr. Stark as if Jarvis weren't there. On the phone she hadn't even bothered to say 'goodbye'. Such things had never bothered Jarvis before – but he'd never _thought _about them before.

_He talks like he doesn't actually believe there's another person in the conversation. He just wants something to throw his voice at and occasionally hear a 'yes, Sir!' to feed his ego..._

Jarvis wished he weren't thinking about it now.

* * *

Dido wasn't happy to let the mysterious Mr. Jarvis go, not when she was making more progress with him than she'd ever dreamed would come from a single conversation, but she didn't want to scare him any more than she clearly already had. When he got up, she backed down and allowed him to flee. Now that he was gone, she decided, she needed to call her father back. He would want to hear about what she'd learned.

The phone rang twice, then connected. Dido didn't wait for her father to say hello. "Dad," she said.

"Sweetie?" he asked. "Did you talk to them? How'd it go?"

"I've got bad news, good news, and more bad news," said Dido.

When she said things like that, Balthazar's response was always the same. "Start with the good news."

"No," said Dido. "The first of the bad news is that our friend Mr. Jarvis does _not _work on the Iron Man suits as far as I can tell."

"He doesn't? What's he do, then?" Balthazar wanted to know.

"That's the good news," said Dido. "You've been to Stark's place." She and her father had joined Tony there for thanksgiving dinner. It had not been among the high points of her relationship with Stark _or _with Balthazar. "Remember his computer? The one that kept making smartass remarks? Do you remember its name?"

"He told me what it stood for," was all Balthazar could offer. "It was something silly."

Dido remembered that, too, though she couldn't recall Stark's exact explanation of the acronym. She'd always suspected that he'd given the computer its name first and then figured out what it stood for later, and was pleased to realize she'd apparently been right. "JARVIS," she said. "Sound familiar? I don't know why I didn't see it right away. This guy is the voice of Stark's computer, and I'm positive he was the primary programmer, too. There's a lot of his personality in the AI. I think he's here with Stark now because the two of them are trying to figure out how to fix the computer."

"That's my girl!" Balthazar said approvingly. "That _is _a man we can use! Did you..."

"I'm not done," Dido interrupted. "There's more bad news, remember? He's pretty attached to Stark." She chewed on her lip a moment as she sorted out her impressions of the man. "He told me he has no family, and I'm not absolutely certain, but I _think _he sees Stark as a sort of surrogate father. On the other hand, he seems aware that it's a one-sided relationship. Stark kind of thinks of him as one of his robots."

"That seems promising," said Balthazar.

"It does," Dido agreed. "And he's figured out why I'm interested in him, but he hasn't told me no yet. He only left now because he thought I was going to ask questions he's not allowed to answer."

She expected her father to say something about that, but instead Balthazar was silent for a long moment. "Did you say Stark thinks of him as one of his _robots_?" he asked finally.

Dido's stomach sank. "I didn't mean it literally, Dad. Stark treats _everybody _like robots." She hadn't been exaggerating about that. "I'm pretty sure he's flesh and blood."

"How sure is 'pretty sure'?" Balthazar wanted to know.

"Pretty damn sure," said Dido. "He was soaking wet when I met him."

Her father snorted. "I don't doubt that Tony Stark can waterproof an android if he wants to."

"Dad!" Dido groaned out loud. "Stop that. Okay? Take a deep breath and listen to yourself. He's not a robot. He's got a _sunburn_. He was pale this morning, and now he's bright red. I offered him some cream for it, but Stark found him something instead."

Of course, Balthazar focused on the wrong aspect of that statement. "So Stark wouldn't let anybody offer medication to this man, and insisted on treating him himself?"

Dido shut her eyes and rubbed her forehead. "Dad."

"Have you seen him eat or drink?" her father persisted.

"I tried to buy him a drink, but he's a teetotaller," said Dido. It was actually sort of admirable – it must be difficult to avoid alcohol while working for Tony Stark. "I'm sure he eats."

"And you said Stark's house computer, the one with the same name, is down?"

Dido shrugged. "That's what they said on the news."

"Now listen to me, Sweetie," Balthazar told her. "Stark's home computer is down, and he's suddenly got a man with him who has the same name, who doesn't eat or drink, who considers him a father... doesn't it sound to you as if he built an android and downloaded the program..."

"Dad, _stop_!" said Dido. "This is bullshit. Edward Jarvis is not a robot. Not even Tony Stark could make a robot _that_ convincing."

There was another silence. "Exactly how 'convincing' are we talking?" Balthazar asked suspiciously.

"I told you, he has a sunburn," said Dido. "Why the hell would anybody build a robot who can get sunburned?"

"Does he spit?" her father asked. "Does he _bleed_? Did you sleep with him?"

Dido's mouth dropped open. Where the hell had _that _come from? She took a breath, fully intending to tell her father that if he wanted Mr. Jarvis _that _badly, he could bloody well fly down to California and fuck the man himself – but she stopped herself. She knew from experience that getting defensive would only make Balthazar all the more suspicious. "_No_," she said through gritted teeth. "I did _not_."

Her anger must have come across regardless, because Balthazar backpedalled. "Now, don't get upset, Sweetie. I just meant that unless you've had very intimate contact with him, how do you know?"

"I know what you _meant_, Dad," said Dido. "I've got to go." And she hung up.

She looked at Mr. Jarvis' drink, sitting forgotten on the table, and for a moment seriously considered picking it up and hurling it across the room. It was hard to say what she was angrier about – the ridiculous and offensive question, or the unreasonable paranoia that had prompted it. Her hand closed around the glass, but instead of throwing it she tipped her head back and downed it. Mr. Jarvis may have been a teetotaller, but _she _was going to need a couple more of those.


	10. Chapter 10: Bubbling Up

Jarvis did have supper eventually. He ordered a club sandwich in the hotel restaurant – the only thing on the menu that looked as if he could eat it with his hands and not earn disapproving stares from the other diners. It came with coleslaw and a large pickle, both of which tasted very... 'sharp' seemed like an appropriate word somehow. The taste was not unpleasant, but he didn't like the slimy texture of the coleslaw very much. He ate it anyway, scraping the slippery strands up with his fork as best he could – humans needed three meals per day, and he didn't want to give himself any health problems. The only thing worse than being useless would be being a burden.

Though he'd been hungry, Jarvis found it difficult to clean his plate. This wasn't just because of the texture of the salad and the fact that the restaurant served rather large helpings, but because for some reason, his conversation with Miss Windham had left Jarvis with very little appetite.

He wasn't upset that Miss Windham was trying to manipulate him – he'd expected that. It was what she'd actually _said_. What she'd _meant_ was something else, but her complaint about Mr. Stark had nevertheless managed to find the crux of what had been irritating Jarvis for the past two days. It was perfectly true that Mr. Stark almost never just _talked _to JARVIS. He gave orders and asked questions, but that didn't really constitute conversation. It was, however, normal. Answering questions and taking orders were what JARVIS was for. He'd always thought he was being helpful – was he really just facilitating Mr. Stark's desire to talk to himself?

Now that he thought of it... whenever he tried to offer unsolicited advice, Mr. Stark would usually cut him off or even mute his voice. Several examples came immediately to mind, and Jarvis didn't doubt he could think of dozens more if he tried to.

_Sir, there are still terabytes of calculations required before an actual _flight _is..._

_JARVIS, sometimes you gotta run before you can walk._

These things hadn't been minor quibbles, either. Ignoring JARVIS' advice had cost Mr. Stark hundreds of thousands of dollars. His refusal to tell Miss Potts about his illness had caused her – and himself – enormous emotional distress. On more than one occasion, he'd very nearly gotten himself killed.

_Sir, there is a potentially fatal buildup of ice..._

_Higher!_

It had always been exasperating. Mr. Stark had never made life easy for anyone who was supposed to be looking out for his welfare – Miss Potts and Mr. Hogan knew that, too. But now I suddenly felt much more _personal _than it ever had before. Why was that? Was it just because human emotions seemed to be, on the whole, rather more intense and visceral than simulated ones? Or was it just that Jarvis had never before had the leisure to sit and think about it?

All he knew for sure was that after spending two days feeling frustrated by his uselessness, he was now wondering if he'd ever been particularly useful in the first place. Why had Mr. Stark bothered to create a computer that could talk if he didn't want to _listen_?

"Dessert menu, Sir?" asked the waiter, holding one out.

Jarvis raised his head, blinking in confusion. It took him a few seconds to realize that this man was talking to _him_. He wasn't a 'sir'. That was what he called _other _people.

"No, thank you," he said.

"All right." The waiter tucked it back under his arm. "Shall I get you the bill, then?"

"Charge it to the penthouse suite," said Jarvis. "Mr. Tony Stark."

"Of course, Sir. You have a nice evening."

Jarvis pulled out his phone to check the time – not having a built-in clock was a terrible inconvenience. It turned out to be a quarter past eight. Mr. Stark would still be with Miss Potts, and they wouldn't want to be interrupted. That made Jarvis feel even worse: back at the house they'd never considered his silent presence an interruption... but that had been _before_, and he was starting to realize there was a distinct possibility that things would never get back to what they'd used to consider 'normal'. Even after this was over, they might well continue to react to him as if he represented another person in the room. He would become something that was _in the way_, rather than just a part of the house.

Much like he was now.

Although he wouldn't be allowed in for at least another four hours, Jarvis took the elevator back up to the top floor anyway. From out in the hallway he could dimly hear Miss Potts' laughter, and when he put an ear to the door, the television was audible.

_Bender, you drank and smoked when you were a robot._

_Yeah, but now it's _bad _for me!_

Mr. Stark chuckled. "Well, I'm glad Jarvis didn't take to it like that!" he said.

"That reminds me more of _you_," said Miss Potts.

Jarvis sighed and sat down on the hallway floor next to the door. Now they were _laughing _at him. He didn't know if that were better or worse.

There was a newspaper lying outside the door, which Mr. Stark and Miss Potts had apparently either not noticed or not bothered to collect. Jarvis retrieved it and decided to try solving the crossword puzzle. That, he recalled, had been Mr. Stanes hobby. Hopefully it would keep Jarvis occupied for at least a little while.

* * *

In fact it was well past one AM when Pepper began talking about leaving. Tony would have preferred her to stay – there might even have been just the teensiest amount of begging involved – but she insisted.

"We're _both _working tomorrow, remember?" she said. "Oh, I hope they've fixed the server by then."

She'd mentioned there being something wrong with it, hadn't she? "I'll take a look at it when I come in," Tony offered. "May I walk you to the parking lot?"

Pepper smiled. "Okay."

Tony got up and gave her a kiss on the cheek, then a kiss on the lips that went on a little longer than he'd meant it to – not that he was about to complain. He doubted it would ever cease to amaze him that after years of putting up with his worst excesses, Pepper was still willing to kiss him. The woman had to be some kind of masochist.

He held the door for her, bowing as she passed as if she were a princess. She shook her head, smiling – and then she stopped.

"Tony," she said.

"What?" he asked. He poked his head out the door and followed her gaze down and to the left – and there was Jarvis, slumped against the wall and fast asleep with a newspaper draped over his knees.

"How long do you think he's been there?" asked Pepper in a whisper.

"I don't know. I thought he was going out with Steve." Tony scratched the back of his neck. He was getting a little worried about Jarvis' proper functioning. This was definitely something he'd never designed his AI to cope with, and he wasn't sure what kind of permanent damage the experience might cause. That wasn't something he had to deal with immediately, though – the man sleeping in the hallway outside his hotel room _was_. He bent to collect the newspaper. "You take the legs, I'll take the arms," he told Pepper.

She raised an eyebrow. "I think it would be easier to just wake him up." She crouched down next to Jarvis and shook him gently. "Jarvis?"

"He's kind of a heavy sleeper," Tony warned her. It had taken him several tries to wake Jarvis that morning.

Pepper persisted, and although it took several minutes of prodding she eventually brought him around. Jarvis mumbled sleepy apologies and a number of other, less intelligible things as they helped him inside and got him onto the sofa. Pepper found an extra blanket and spread it over him.

That was what Pepper did, Tony thought as he watched her. She _took care_ of things, anything and everything that needed it, whether it was a Fortune 500 company or a lost dog, or even a narcissistic man-child who fancied himself a superhero.

"All tucked in?" he asked.

"Sleeping like a baby," she confirmed. "I wonder what this is like for him."

"I'm pretty sure he's the only person who wants it to be over with more than I do," said Tony. He took Pepper gently by the shoulders. "Now, let's try that again, and hope there's no more surprises."

* * *

Tony woke up the next morning to the smell of coffee. That was odd.

It wouldn't have been if he'd spent the night at home: the automatic coffeemaker would have had a cup ready for him in his room, and he would pick it up and sip it while listening to JARVIS read him the headlines and weather report. But Tony wasn't at home – he was at the hotel, and he didn't remember calling for room service. For a few minutes he lay there watching the sunlight on the ceiling and trying to figure out if the smell were real or just his imagination. Then he heard the sound of a spoon clinking against crockery. That wasn't imaginary. Tony rolled out of bed to investigate.

After the trouble he'd had waking Jarvis yesterday morning, Tony had expected him to sleep in again – so it was a surprise to find that instead he was up, showered, and dressed in his new suit. He'd apparently ordered breakfast and it was on the table. So was today's newspaper. Jarvis himself was halfway through a piece of toast, but when he saw Tony he quickly swallowed and stood up.

"Good morning, Sir," he said.

Tony looked at the table again, wondering if he'd missed something. "I thought you said you weren't a morning person."

"I woke early and couldn't fall asleep again because of my sunburn," said Jarvis, "so I thought I'd have breakfast brought up for you. Remember, you're meeting Miss Potts at Stark Industries today." His shoulders twitched when he talked about the sunburn, and Tony felt a pang of sympathy. Trying to sleep on a sunburn sucked. Wearing a suit over one and not scratching was just about impossible.

"I remember," Tony said. "I, er, thought you didn't like that suit."

"You said that going without clothing was unacceptable, Sir," said Jarvis.

Tony supposed he had, and he was glad it had sunk in – but he couldn't shake the feeling that something was _wrong _here. It was clear enough that Jarvis was just trying to do some version of what he usually did at home in the mornings, but Tony was getting an impression of guarded hostility. Maybe it was the way Jarvis was looking at him, as if waiting for something.

"How was your evening with Miss Potts, Sir?" Jarvis asked.

"Fine," said Tony. Maybe he'd forgotten something and Jarvis was just too polite to remind him? No, that made no sense. Jarvis never hesitated to remind Tony of things, especially the things he didn't really want to be reminded of. Just to be safe, though, he asked anyway: "did I forget something?"

"Only your manners, Sir."

"Oh, _those_!" Tony relaxed. The coffee smell hadn't been his imagination, but he decided that the hostility had. Jarvis was just being a smartass, as usual. The expectant stare had probably been unintentional: Jarvis hadn't had eyes long enough to know he wasn't supposed to do that. "I haven't seen my _manners _in years," Tony said, grabbing a pancake off the breakfast table. "Let me know if they turn up. I'm gonna hit the shower – keep the coffee hot!"

Having gotten over that slightly rocky start, Tony was in quite good spirits, humming to himself as he showered and shaved. Things were looking rosy: he was well on his way to patching things up with Pepper, he could do the stuff he was supposed to have done on Monday, and as long as he could avoid any more awkward encounters with Dido Windham, the only other thing he'd have to worry about today was coming up with a list of alternate ways to get in touch with Dr. Strange. There had to be _something_. Smoke signals? A Ouija board? How did sorcerers communicate? Who would _know_ about something like that? It wasn't as if he could just look up 'wizards' in the yellow pages.

Tony wrapped a towel around his waist and went to grab his clothes. Upon opening the bathroom door, he found Jarvis standing in front of one of the mirrors in the main room. Tony's laptop was sitting open on the desk below it, and a YouTube video was laying, demonstrating the proper way to knot a tie. Tony bit back laughter and stood watching as Jarvis frowned in concentration. He was using his left hand in an attempt to make the image in the mirror match the one on the computer screen, and it wasn't making the task any easier for him. Finally, after several frustrated grimaces, he got it right and pulled the knot snug. Then he stood looking at his reflection a moment before raising one hand and touching the glass very lightly, only the tips of his fingers making contact.

It was time to speak up. Tony cleared his throat and clapped a couple of times. "Well done!" he declared. "Not bad for a first time at all!"

Jarvis started – it seemed he hadn't realized Tony was watching – but quickly regained his composure. "Thank you, Sir," he said. "Shall we make a deal? I promise to keep _my _clothes on today if you will do the same with _yours_."

"Deal," said Tony, smiling. He fished a shirt and jacket out of one of his suitcases.

"I'm sure Miss Potts will be most appreciative," Jarvis said. "Speaking of which: may I ask what excuse I should give her when you run off at lunchtime?"

"Who says I'm going to do that?" asked Tony, trying to ease his arm into the shirt sleeve without aggravating his bad shoulder. After yesterday's activity, the joint was rather sore.

"Let's be honest, Sir," said Jarvis. "Your record of keeping your promises to her for more than half a day at a time is not very good."

Tony stopped short with his shirt half-on and replayed the sentence in his head, then looked up to catch Jarvis' eye in the mirror. There was no smile on the other man's face, just a deadly serious expression and an even, unblinking blue stare that looked unpleasantly like he'd _meant _that comment. Tony bristled. There was nothing wrong with a little good-nature sarcasm, but that had crossed a line.

"Jarvis," said Tony, "I realize this is asking a lot, but maybe you could keep a lid on that for a while?"

"A lid on what, Sir?" Jarvis asked innocently.

"_That_," said Tony. "You know, the acerbic commentary. Isn't that what got you into this mess in the first place? You're supposed to be learning not to mouth off at people." He buttoned his shirt.

"I've been learning a great deal, Sir," said Jarvis, "although I don't know if Dr. Strange would consider all of it quite relevant."

As he ate his breakfast under Jarvis' watchful eyes, Tony tried again and again to reassure himself that it was all in his head. Jarvis only looked like he was staring because he was _used_ to watching Tony's every move, and he didn't realize that it now looked rude. More than rude, actually – downright confrontational. It was a little weird to realize that JARVIS had, in fact, more or less been staring at him like that constantly for the last several years. When all this was over and Jarvis was back where he belonged, Tony would have to do something about that. He didn't want to spend all his time at home picturing this skinny, ginger-blond Englishman standing there watching him.

"Right," Tony said, stuffing the last of a banana into his mouth and washing it down with coffee. "I'm on my way. Stay out of trouble."

"I'm coming with you, Sir," said Jarvis.

Tony hadn't expected that. "What?"

"I'm coming to work with you," Jarvis repeated. "As I said yesterday, I don't want to sit in this room with nothing to do, and since I have the chance, I'd like to see what the Stark Industries complex looks like from the outside. I'm curious what it is you do all day."

Tony pushed aside the question of whether that last sentence was sarcastic or not, and thought about it. Having Jarvis following him around all day would be a pain in the butt. He would have to introduce him to a dozen people, and then later when this was all over, come up with an explanation for why 'Mr. Jarvis' had vanished as suddenly as he'd appeared. Maybe he could say this was an old friend who was visiting, and would soon be going back to Europe. That would work, but it would be so much easier to just leave him behind...

But then Tony remembered finding Jarvis asleep in the hallway last night and took pity. Jarvis' purpose in life – or its computer equivalent – was to help Tony. He was doing what he could with that under the circumstances. "All right," he said. "Come on, but remember what I said: suit stays _on_."

"Of course, Sir," said Jarvis. "As _I_ said: just so long as yours does."

"I'll try not to strip down in the middle of a budget meeting, but if it's that or falling asleep I'm not sure I can make any promises."

"I'm sure the board of directors is accustomed to your antics, Sir."

Tony and Jarvis _almost _ran into Miss Windham on their way out of the hotel – but only almost. She was standing not far from the concierge desk, where Tony stopped to arrange for somebody to pick up his dry cleaning. He glanced up once or twice to make sure she hadn't noticed him, but she didn't seem to – she was in the middle of a conversation with a toweringly tall East Asian man. Tony frowned. The man looked familiar, but he couldn't quite pinpoint where he'd seen him before, and he definitely wasn't about to draw attention to his presence by asking. He finished his arrangements, and he and Jarvis escaped from the lobby unscathed.

Yes, he decided, things were definitely looking up.

* * *

"Miss Windham?" asked Huang.

"Oh! Sorry!" Dido shook her head and returned her attention to him, hoping she hadn't missed anything important. "I just thought I saw somebody I knew," she explained.

Huang glanced at the revolving door, still turning slightly after the two men had walked out. "That wouldn't have happened to be Mr. Tony Stark, would it?" he asked.

"Unfortunately, it would," sighed Dido. "I can't seem to avoid him this week."

"He has an unpleasant habit of turning up where he's little expected and less wanted," Huang agreed.

Dido wasn't about to argue, but she didn't want to talk about Tony Stark right now. Doing so would only remind her of the conversation she'd had with her father the previous night, and she was still angry about that on multiple levels. Instead, she tried to change the subject to something innocuous. "So how was the orchestra?"

"It was lovely," Huang replied. "Thank you for recommending it."

"You're welcome," said Dido. "I wish I hadn't had to miss it, myself, but Dad needed me to do some work for him last night." That wasn't a lie – trying to instill doubts in Stark employees whom Balthazar wanted to steal was, technically, doing work for Dad.

"I understand. Did you ask him whether he would be able to come speak with me in person?" Huang asked.

Oops. Here they were in another place Dido hadn't wanted to be. "Yes, I did," she lied, expression carefully neutral. "Unfortunately, he's very busy this week. Don't worry, he's given me full authority to finalize things in his absence."

Huang looked doubtful, but said, "I'm sure he has. However, there is an important personal matter I've been hoping to discuss with him."

The apology, of course. "I'll try again, but this really isn't a good time."

"Please try to impress upon him that it's a matter of great importance," Huang insisted.

Dido made a couple more promises to that effect, but still didn't mean a word of them – the next time she talked to her father, the only thing she intended to impress upon him was that he wasn't allowed _near _here. If he came to California _now_, he'd be here to search for Tony Stark's Robot Friend and wouldn't have time for Huang, and that would be a disaster. When Huang got more paranoid rantings instead of the apology he wanted, the last day of careful trust-rebuilding would come down like a game of Jenga.

She did wish she'd gotten a better look at Tony and his friend when they were at the desk. Dido was absolutely confident that Mr. Jarvis couldn't possibly be a robot, because things like that just _did not happen_, but she knew that Balthazar would bring it up again. When he did, she wanted to be able to settle the matter. She wanted to be able to say that yes, she'd seen the man eat or drink, or get a papercut and bleed, that he was thoroughly organic and that she wanted her father to see a psychiatrist, please.

"Miss Windham?" said Huang again.

Once more, Dido had to shake herself back to reality. "Sorry, daydreaming! I'm afraid I've got a lot on my mind right now." This wouldn't do. After working so hard to assure this man that the people at Windham were friendly and trustworthy, she couldn't keep drifting off on him like that.

After closing the agreement with Huang, she decided, she was going to sit Balthazar down and thrash this out once and for all. Her father's paranoia was not harmless. It frustrated and angered people he was close to, and it alienated his business partners. It had to stop, and if that meant forcing him to see a doctor or take medication when he didn't want to, then Dido would drag him kicking and screaming. Right after she proved to him that Stark's friend was not a bloody robot.


	11. Chapter 11: Boiling Over

Jarvis had listened attentively to absolutely everything Mr. Stark had said to him that morning – and he'd never once said 'thank you'. Of course he hadn't. Thanking Jarvis for doing the things he did would be like thanking a light for coming on when the switch was flipped. The light didn't come on out of the goodness of its heart, it did it because that was what it had been built to do. Likewise, Jarvis had been built to look after Mr. Stark. Why should he be thanked?

Why indeed. The issue was that while JARVIS was a machine, yes, he was not a machine like a car or a light bulb. Those things couldn't learn, couldn't analyze, couldn't _think _like JARVIS could, and while he knew there were some ways in which his mind was not and would never be equal to a human's – he could not, for example, think creatively – he'd always considered himself just a bit closer to being a _person _than most of Mr. Stark's inventions. Were they really all the same in the mind of their creator?

That thought made Jarvis _angry_, and it was a bit of a shock to find that anger manifested itself in a very _physical _way. There was a sense of hot pressure just behind his sternum, as if something in his chest had tied itself in a knot that was slowly drawing tighter and tighter. It made his body rigid and twitchy during the hour-long drive from Malibu to Los Angeles, and the longer he sat there, watching the ocean out the window and brooding on this, the worse it became.

The anger wasn't all directed at Mr. Stark, either. Jarvis was also growing increasingly angry with Miss Windham for pointing the situation out. If she hadn't said anything, he probably would have never thought about it, but now the idea was there, and had settled in as if it never, ever planned on going away. And Mr. Stark himself, sitting on Jarvis' left reading the newspaper, was utterly oblivious.

He was still oblivious when they arrived: he strode into the lobby of the building with his arms spread out as if to welcome the world. "We have arrived!" Mr. Stark announced proudly.

Miss Potts, who had been speaking with one of the security personnel, looked astonished. "You're early!" she said.

"Jarvis got me up in plenty of time." Mr. Stark clapped Jarvis on the shoulder, then rubbed his hands together eagerly. "So! What's on the plate for today?"

Miss Potts pulled out her tablet. "Well, the server seems to be okay this morning, so I managed to round up those people who were interested in your seismic data. If you could give them a progress report..."

"Can do," said Mr. Stark. "Jarvis and I were working on that Sunday night, weren't we?"

"We were indeed, Sir," said Jarvis. Mr. Stark had been given permission to access a number of seismographs up and down the California coast, and he'd been having Jarvis work with the data to develop algorithms for more accurate tremor prediction. They'd been starting to find some interesting patterns – Jarvis had in fact been in the middle of uploading some of their findings when Dr. Strange intervened. "Though we'll have to inform them that a demonstration won't be possible at the moment," he added.

"They'll live," said Mr. Stark. "What else."

Miss Potts scrolled down her list. "The Breast Cancer Foundation is hoping they can persuade you to sponsor a fundraiser."

"I am all for the funding of breasts," said Mr. Stark.

This sort of back-and-forth went on for a few minutes more, with Miss Potts listing off items on her agenda and Mr. Stark making a joke, or at least a comment, about each one. Finally, he announced that he would be upstairs getting his presentation ready, and walked off whistling. Miss Potts watched him go and heaved a frustrated sigh.

"He still doesn't take anything _seriously_," she said aloud to nobody.

"He never has," Jarvis observed.

Miss Potts had appeared surprised by Jarvis' presence, but she hadn't yet commented on it. Now she looked at him and said, "are you going to be with Tony all day?"

"Yes, Miss Potts," said Jarvis. "I'll do my best to keep him out of trouble." He wondered if Mr. Stark ever thanked Miss Potts for all she did for him... Jarvis couldn't recall a specific instance of it, but he had a feeling that it must have happened at least once. Miss Potts, after all, deserved thanks. _She _was not a machine.

"Good luck with that," she said, then asked, "are you doing okay?"

"I am... coping," Jarvis decided.

She nodded. "Well, if you need anything, let me know." She reached out and put a hand on his arm. "Do you have my phone number?"

"Yes, Miss Potts."

"Good." She nodded. "You know, Jarvis... there's times I've practically been living in Tony's house for weeks on end, and yet now that you're here, I feel like I've never actually gotten to know you. I wonder if that's what Dr. Strange was getting at," she mused.

"If so, I think there are better ways he could have gone about it," said Jarvis.

"The people SHIELD work with have never been a subtle bunch," Miss Potts observed. "Come with me – let's get you a security badge so Happy won't throw you out. Tony didn't even think of that, did he?"

"No, Miss Potts."

"It figures. This way."

* * *

As he had anticipated, Tony had to introduce Jarvis to a number of people that day. The first were the experts who'd gathered for the update on his seismic prediction model. Tony was a mere fifteen minutes late to that, and only because he had to polish up his slide show. This had nearly been ready anyway: all he had to do was shove the data he and JARVIS had collected – good thing he'd been keeping that on the company servers and not his home hard drive – into some pretty charts and maps, and he was ready to go.

That done, he found Jarvis – Pepper had taken him to get a security badge – and headed up to the meeting room. There he shook hands with a dozen or so seismologists and technicians, introducing himself to the ones he'd never met before. And then, because they looked curious, he also introduced his companion.

"Dr. Edward Jarvis," he said. "An old friend from MIT, actually. He's in town this week, and I thought I'd show him around the place."

"Hello, Dr. Jarvis," a man said. "You look like you've been enjoying the California sunshine!" Tony chuckled at that, but Jarvis grimaced.

"Hello, Dr. Jarvis," said one of the women. "Bharati Mukherjee, UCLA. What's your work in?"

"Artificial intelligence," Jarvis replied smoothly. "Mr. Stark and I have worked on a number of projects together."

Ms. Mukherjee nodded politely, although she seemed a little puzzled that she'd never heard of 'Dr. Jarvis' before. Tony wondered whether she might try to look him up, and briefly considered throwing together a fake Wikipedia page before deciding that would be overkill. Most likely everybody would have forgotten about him an hour from now.

As the lights dimmed and everybody took their seats, Jarvis leaned over and whispered, "so I'm a _doctor _now, am I, Sir?"

"Only once," said Tony, who had three doctorates if he didn't count the honorary ones. "Don't let it go to your head." He sat back in his chair and prepared for twenty minutes of boredom followed by an hour of questions. Most likely _dumb_ questions.

The projector lit up and should have begun showing the slides, but instead all that appeared was a blue screen with an error message, saying the file could not be located. There was a chorus of disappointed groans.

"That's not right," Tony protested, grabbing the nearest tablet for another look. "I saved it right there on the server..."

"We're shut out of the server again," sighed the man who'd commented on Jarvis' sunburn, and something in Tony's head suddenly went click. JARVIS had been in near-constant contact with the company server... could this be a side effect of Dr. Strange's interference? "This wouldn't happen to have been going on since Monday morning, would it?" he asked.

"The server reset when your home computer went down, Mr. Stark," another woman explained. "Everything seemed to come back just fine at first. The server can ping every computer on the network, but we keep getting locked out. Every time we think it's fixed, it starts happening again."

That sounded like a glitch in the code to Tony – very possibly triggered as a side effect of wrenching JARVIS out of the hard drive, but probably fixable if he could find it. He stood up. "I did tell Pepper I'd take a look at it," he remembered. "I'll head down to the server room." Fiddling with the server sounded like much more fun than giving a slideshow anyway.

Jarvis stood, too. "Perhaps I can be of some help."

Tony wasn't sure about that – would Jarvis really be able to find his way around a computer from the _outside_? There was no harm, however, in letting him tag along. After all, he was here in the first place because he didn't want to sit somewhere and be bored. "Sure," Tony said. "Just don't touch anything I didn't tell you to touch."

"Of course, Sir."

They took the elevator down to the server room and found a technician already there, hammering frantically on a keyboard. "I know!" she called out, not even looking up from her monitor as the two men entered. "I've gotten about sixteen text messages and three actual phone calls! I'm fucking _working _on it, and the next person who asks me if it's the firewall is gonna get a swift kick in the... oh, good morning, Mr. Stark." She jumped to her feet to greet him. "I, uh..."

"At ease," Tony told her. She was a small, wiry woman with short hair dyed an interesting shade of pink. "I believe you that it's not the firewall. Have you checked the routers?"

"That's what I'm working on," the tech replied. "We've fixed it before by just doing another restart, but it keeps coming back. I want to fix it _properly_."

"All right," said Tony. "Let me get a look."

* * *

Mr. Stark and the technician went through everything both of them could think of, without success, while Jarvis watched silently. He was certain he could solve this. He'd been working with the Stark Industries Los Angeles server for years, and he knew every component and every line of code in it, every error and bad connection, every dust bunny and dead insect. It wouldn't be so easy to manipulate now that he couldn't work directly with the machine code, but even so...

"Did you change the NIC?" asked Mr. Stark.

"That was the first thing we did, back on Monday morning," the tech replied.

It wasn't a hardware problem – Jarvis was quite sure of that and he suspected Mr. Stark was, too. Mr. Stark would know as well as Jarvis himself did that the home computer maintained a connection with the company server, always updating things like Mr. Stark's schedule and their seismic data, among others. Part of JARVIS had been working on that while another refused to be drawn into a philosophical debate with Dr. Strange. When Strange had put him into his human body, that connection would have been abruptly severed.

Mr. Stark threw up his hands in defeat. "Are you _sure _it's not the firewall?"

"The firewall's not even on." The tech brought up a screen. "See?"

And then suddenly, Jarvis had it. It was a very strange moment, as all he'd observed in the last few minutes and all the things he knew about the server and its software suddenly seemed to fly together into a single blinding burst of an _idea_. Out of nowhere he _knew_, with a certainty he could 't attribute to any algorithm or calculation but just felt somewhere in the pit of his stomach, exactly what the problem was and how to solve it. So that was what _inspiration _felt like. No wonder they compared it to a light bulb being turned on. Sudden illumination was the perfect metaphor.

"It's a software problem," he said. "It's telling you the firewall is off, but it's not."

Mr. Stark and the technician both turned to stare at him. The latter rolled her eyes. "Excuse you," she said. "You haven't even looked at it."

"Then let me look," said Jarvis, "and I'll show you."

The technician tried to protest, but Mr. Stark gently moved her aside so Jarvis could sit down at the terminal. He took his place and soon found himself feeling considerably more sympathy for Captain Roger's difficulty with typing. The hand movements involved had to be precise and highly coordinated, and manual dexterity was something Jarvis was still having trouble with.

"Do you _know _anything about computers?" the technician asked suspiciously. "No offense, man, but you look like an accountant."

"He might know a bit," said Mr. Stark.

It took a couple of minutes – an extremely long time indeed by computer standards – but Jarvis forced the machine to give him a full list of active programs. "There," he said, pointing to the screen. "There is your firewall."

The technician sucked on her lip. "Well, son of a gun," she said.

"I was in contact with..." Jarvis stopped himself in time, and tried again: "I was working with the data on the server via Mr. Stark's home computer early on Monday morning," he said. "When that computer... failed, the server lost contact with it in a way it didn't recognize, and the learning software in the security program concluded that it was seeing a previously unknown vulnerability in the operating system. Certain types of requests are reminding it of the severed connection and it shuts them out, but because the requests are coming from within the network, it blocks every machine in the building. Not showing that the firewall is up, that's an unrelated bug." He brought up the security software's memory and began scrolling through it.

"Wait!" the tech protested. "That's not how you do that! You can't just go in there and..."

Mr. Stark held up a hand. "Let him try."

Although Jarvis still had to look at the keyboard as he worked, typing was getting easier. It would take time and practice to develop the procedural memory necessary to do it quickly, but the basics were easy enough. He found where the security system had stashed the memory of the severed connection and re-classified it as a non-threat – not difficult at all now that he knew what he was looking for.

"You ought to be able to ping the server now," he told the tech. "The firewall bug will require a patch."

Mr. Stark grinned. "I told you he had this."

The technician shook her head. "Who are you?" she asked Jarvis.

Mr. Stark repeated the same story he'd told to the people upstairs: that Jarvis was a friend from MIT – the introduction now included the words 'doctorate in computer sciences' – who was visiting for the week.

"Wow," the woman said. "I'm sorry I said you looked like an accountant. If you're going to be in town for a while, did you want to have coffee sometime?"

"I'm afraid that probably won't be possible," he said, "but thank you – no offense taken."

As they made their way back up to the meeting room, Mr. Stark gave Jarvis a look-over and then said, "why do women keep wanting to talk to you?"

"Miss Windham said they like my accent," replied Jarvis.

Jarvis didn't need to pay attention to Mr. Stark's presentation on their seismic data – he had, after all, done much of the work in preparing it. Instead, he sat with his hands folded on the conference room table, dwelling on the sensations association with both the initial inspiration and the satisfaction of carrying the idea through and discovering that he was right. That amazing moment of insight, the act of _creative thought_, had been exhilarating... and then, when he'd successfully fixed the problem, he'd realized that he _wasn't useless_. There were things he could accomplish, real meaningful things beyond simply looking after his body, even in this form.

That couldn't have been the mysterious thing-he-was-needed-for that Dr. Strange had alluded to. The sorcerer surely didn't care about problems with the company server, particularly when he'd been indirectly the cause of them. It did make Jarvis feel a bit more confident, though, that when the moment arrived he'd be prepared to deal with it.

These good feelings were somewhat marred, however, by the fact that it still hadn't occurred to Mr. Stark to thank him. He'd thanked the technician for her efforts, but in his mind, apparently, Jarvis had still simply been doing what he'd been designed for.

* * *

With the server back in working order, Tony's presentation went very smoothly. The people in attendance were disappointed to hear that Tony's home computer was down and he wouldn't be able to work on his algorithms for a while, but on the whole they seemed impressed. Tony assured them that he was working on his technical issues, and said he would let them know when he had things up and running again.

Then the woman who'd asked Jarvis what he worked on spoke up. "Dr. Jarvis," she said, "have you been working with Mr. Stark on this project?"

"Yes, I have," said Jarvis.

"He's one of my programmers," Tony decided. "That's why he's in town."

Ms. Mukherjee nodded. "You're dealing with an awful lot of variables," she observed. "Could you tell me how you organized..."

Tony broke in. "Sorry," he said, "but we really don't have time for any more questions. I've got to go meet with some people from the Breast Cancer Society and believe me, ladies and gentlemen, I don't want to keep them waiting! Come on, Jarvis."

"Right behind you, Sir," Jarvis said.

Tony wasn't all that sure what he thought of the whole incident with the server. The petty part of him, which was admittedly a fairly loud component of his internal monologue, was a bit annoyed that Jarvis had been the first to figure it out. But another part of him was proud, as if he'd just watched his kid win a spelling bee or something. Tony didn't have any children that he knew about, and had negative interest in spelling bees, but he'd very much enjoyed watching something he'd created be successful.

He was also just a _tiny _bit irritated by the interest people were taking in Jarvis. Tony had become slightly more self-aware over the past few years, and he was just about prepared to admit that he didn't like not being the centre of attention. That was the spot Dido Windham had been prodding him in yesterday – and today the tech and Ms. Mukherjee just seemed to be rubbing it in. Most likely, he decided, it was just that Jarvis was a novelty, whereas Tony was somebody familiar.

This situation must be bothering him more than he thought, he mused. Usually he only analyzed his feelings like that where Pepper was concerned.

The rest of the morning went quite well. Everyone was happy to have the server back in working order, and word had gotten around that it was Mr. Stark's visiting college friend who'd fixed it. A number of people stopped to shake Jarvis' hand and thank him, and Tony began to wonder what would happen if he just came out and _told _them who Jarvis really was. Would they still find it so impressive?

By lunchtime the interest had died down a little, and Tony felt quite accomplished. He'd made one presentation and attended another without falling asleep, arranged for a large charity donation and met two applicants for a management position. It was all the sort of work that, in a perfect world, he would have left to others – Tony himself much preferred to _make_ things, but Pepper insisted that he occasionally show up and remind people that his name was on the building. And she wasn't cruel enough to have him spend the entire day that way. For the afternoon she'd suggested he stop by the main robotics lab. He was looking forward to that – and to seeing what Jarvis might think of it.

"That was a productive morning," he declared as they waited for an elevator. "I think I'd like some sushi." This was a spur-of-the-moment idea, but he decided it was a good one. "Let's go get sushi," he said to Jarvis. "There's a place a couple of blocks away. We'll grab Pepper... no, wait, she doesn't eat sushi." She didn't trust uncooked fish – Tony was rather proud of remembering that without having to be reminded. "All right, we'll call Steve. We'll all go have lunch, and be back this afternoon."

Jarvis, however, didn't look impressed. "Miss Potts is expecting you to have lunch here," he reminded Tony. "If you try to change your plans, she'll worry you're going to run off again."

In the back of his head, Tony observed that Jarvis really didn't _need _to have said 'again'. "It's just lunch," he said. "We'll let her know where we've gone and we'll be back in an hour or so. I'm having brunch with her tomorrow anyway, aren't I? I'm pretty sure there was some kind of Thursday brunch coming up... wait, is it really Wednesday _already_?"

"I asked you this morning if you'd want me to make your excuses to Miss Potts when you ran off," said Jarvis. "I see I wasn't far off the mark."

"I'm not running off!" Tony was starting to get angry. Why was Jarvis harping on this? Maybe he _hadn't _been imagining the sense of hostility that morning.

"You are easily distracted, Sir," said Jarvis, his tone suggesting rather less tact than his words. "And you did promise Miss Potts you would try to be more responsible."

"Lunch," Tony repeated. "It's _lunch_. I have a craving."

Jarvis was unswayed. "When Miss Potts is upset with you, it's usually because you've been acting on impulse. If you change your plans at the last minute, she'll doubt that you really meant what you promised. If you want my advice..."

"I don't," Tony interrupted. He was getting tired of this: Jarvis was supposed to _banter _with him, but this was way too close to an actual _argument_. Not a lot of people were allowed to argue with Tony Stark. Pepper was. Rhodey was. Obadiah had sometimes gotten away with it. Jarvis was not allowed.

But Jarvis himself didn't appear to realize that. "You never do," he said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Tony.

"I mean exactly what I said, _Sir_," Jarvis informed him. "Every time I offer you my advice, you disregard it."

"I do not."

"At the moment I can think of four examples of times I when I offered advice and you ignored it with physical, financial, or emotional consequences to yourself or others," Jarvis told him. "I'm sure if I had my normal memory facilities I could come up with many more."

Tony didn't believe that. "Name one," he challenged.

"On your first test of the Mark II, I warned you that ice was building up on the outside of the suit," said Jarvis. "You insisted upon trying to set an altitude record and nearly fell to your death."

"Yeah, but I didn't actually," said Tony.

"When you were suffering from palladium poisoning I requested _repeatedly _that you tell Miss Potts about it," Jarvis went on. "You didn't, and she only found out by overhearing a comment you made once you were well again. I believe she still hasn't explicitly forgiven you, and she worries that you're having other problems you're not telling her about. She asks me for reports on your general health at least twice a week."

Tony hadn't known that, and was a little hurt that Pepper didn't trust him. Still: "_I didn't die_," he pointed out, "and she did find out, so in the end it didn't matter."

"It _did _matter, Sir," said Jarvis. "You would have spared yourself and her a great deal of upset if you'd only told her the truth when I suggested you do so."

Tony shook his head. "I'm done talking about this," he decided.

"I'm not," said Jarvis.

"I don't care," said Tony. "Mute."

"No, Sir."

Tony hesitated. It was true that he'd given the command without thinking, and he should have realized that Jarvis – _this _Jarvis – would not be constrained to obey it. But when he looked at the man who'd used to be his operating system, he found him drawn up to his full six foot plus and glaring out of cold blue eyes. It wasn't the rejection of the command that made Tony bristle. It was the stiff, angry defiance in Jarvis' face and posture.

"Excuse me?" asked Tony.

Jarvis folded his arms across his chest. "I said _no, Sir_. I believe you heard me. You can't mute me, and I have something to say."

"Well, hurry up and say it so I can go have lunch!" Tony ordered.

"A conversation requires two participants," said Jarvis. "If one person talks without listening to the other, that's a monologue, and I am tired of your monologues. I am tired of buttressing your ego. I would like to be _listened _to, and you don't bother to listen to me whether it's about matters of life and death or simply where to go for lunch! Miss Windham said you were incapable of distinguishing between people and lab equipment, and I am beginning to think she may be right!"

Tony was stunned. His first instinct was to defend himself. A number of possible replies occurred to him, but each one died in his throat in turn as he realized that actually _saying _them would only make things worse. He couldn't ask when Dido had said that, because that would sound as if he were avoiding the point. He couldn't say that he _did_ listen, because Jarvis would ask for an example and at the moment Tony couldn't think of one.

And he certainly couldn't say _but you _are _lab equipment, that's what I built you for_, could he? Wasn't that technically what JARVIS was? Or – and the thought hit him like a ground-to-air missile – did _this _version of Jarvis, at least, properly count as a human being?

In the end, all he said was, "was that it?"

"That is it... _Sir_," said Jarvis, and he turned and strode towards the stairwell.

"Where the hell are you supposed to be going?" Tony demanded, following him. He didn't know if the question were motivated by anger or concern, and he didn't much care. "You've got nowhere to go! You've had nothing to do since Monday morning except follow me around like a damn dog!"

"Perhaps I am finished with following you around!" said Jarvis. He thrust the stairwell door open – it couldn't bang because of the spring on it, but he got it pretty close – stepped through, and was gone.

Behind Tony, the elevator arrived with a _ding_.


	12. Chapter 12: The Consequences

Though he'd given the impression that he intended to leave the building, Jarvis actually descended only a couple of flights before sitting down in the stairwell to wait. He predicted that Mr. Stark would take the elevator down in the hopes of meeting him on the ground floor, but Jarvis didn't want to resume the argument – and he felt he needed some time to properly process what had just taken place.

It certainly wasn't the first time he'd _wanted _to say something after Mr. Stark had told him to mute. There'd been times he'd wanted to apologize, times he'd wanted to protest, times when he'd just wanted to have the last word, but today was the first time he'd ever actually been able to say _no, Sir_. And_ no, Sir_, for all it was only two syllables, had been a _revelation_.

Having been programmed to be fairly cautious, Jarvis frequently _disagreed _with Mr. Stark, but he'd never _disobeyed _him. The very idea had only ever occurred in his most frustrated moments, and even then only in a rather abstract sort of way. It was a thing that would have been nice but wasn't possible, and would have consequences impossible to calculate. Practical disobedience had never really been an option and Jarvis had always known it.

But a minute ago, he'd looked Mr. Stark in the eye and had said, _no, Sir_. In the moment it had been thrilling, a sharp tingle in the pit of his stomach and a strange haze of unreality over everything as he went on to say exactly what he'd been stewing about all morning. Now that the moment was over, however, the tingle had turned into a lump of lead. The initial exhilaration had become cold terror.

_No, Sir_. It had been a silly thing to get angry over, the question of where to have lunch. On any other day he would have given up and passed the message to Miss Potts without letting the matter go anywhere near that far, and Miss Potts would have forgiven Mr. Stark because she always did. It wouldn't have mattered to anybody if _he _hadn't become upset about it. But it was if the powerful, all-consuming emotions this body felt had come to a boil, spilling over into furious words.

If Jarvis had managed to do that while he was still part of the house, to say _no, Sir_ and then go on to do exactly what Mr. Stark had just told him not to do... he didn't doubt that Mr. Stark would have taken him to pieces in order to find the malfunction and fix it. That wasn't possible now, but he had to wonder whether he'd just sealed the fate he'd been worried about since this began. Would Mr. Stark now decide he had no use for a thing that would not obey orders, and discard him?

And what did the capacity for disobedience mean for Jarvis himself? If he could say_ no, Sir_, what else might he be able to do? Was there anything he _couldn't _do?

Was saying _no, Sir_ even something he'd ever really _wanted_ to be able to do in the first place?

Having done it, was it something he'd want to _not_ be able to do?

Was it something he would no longer be able to do once this was over? When Dr. Strange restored him... would he forget the feel of sand and of sunburn, the taste of coffee and of chocolate, and how to say _no_?

He was 'mulling' again, questions without answers... but unlike at the beach, when the questions had not seemed particularly urgent, he now felt utterly overwhelmed by them. Jarvis didn't know how to think about such things. He'd never been programmed for it. The flood of doubt made breathing difficult, his chest seeming to tighten until his lungs could not inflate. The anger and resentment he'd felt towards Mr. Stark could not stand up to that. They seemed to have been crushed under the pressure of these new and more immediate concerns.

Jarvis had no idea how long he sat there, staring blankly at a point on the far side of the cinder-block wall. He was only brought back to awareness of his surroundings when he heard a familiar voice call, "you can't smoke in here!"

Jarvis looked around, unsure whether the speaker were addressing him. At the next landing, Mr. Hogan had cracked the door open and was looking disapprovingly down at him. No-one else was in evidence, so he must have meant Jarvis.

"I'm not smoking, Mr. Hogan," Jarvis replied, holding up his hands to show that he didn't have a cigarette.

Mr. Hogan frowned, puzzled. "So what _are _you doing?"

"I am having an existential crisis," said Jarvis, because he couldn't think of any realistic excuse for why he was sitting there. The truth would have to do.

"Oh," said Mr. Hogan. "Uh... do you have a security badge?"

Jarvis unclipped it from his jacket pocket and held it up.

"Uh-huh." Mr. Hogan made a vague gesture. "Well, uh, I'll leave you to that, then," he said, and started to shut the door, then opened it a little ways again. "Have we met?" he asked.

"Not as such, Mr. Hogan, no," said Jarvis.

The door closed, and Mr. Hogan was gone.

Jarvis waited a few moments longer, then got up. He couldn't stay there all day, after all – but nor did he want to return to Mr. Stark and have to immediately face the consequences of what he'd just done. Especially when he could suddenly remember that there _were _occasions when Mr. Stark had listened to his advice, particularly when it had to do with something he was building. On his hot rod, on the seismology project, on the Iron Man suits, Mr. Stark had valued Jarvis' input, even if he hadn't always said so. For the past few days Jarvis hadn't had an input to give on the things Mr. Stark usually wanted it for, because they weren't working on those things, and if Mr. Stark seemed unusually preoccupied and blunt, it was probably because he was distressed by Jarvis' transformation. On Monday morning he clearly hadn't known how to respond to it any better than Jarvis himself had.

Why had Jarvis ever allowed himself to listen to Miss Windham? He'd _known _she would try to manipulate him, and he'd let her do it anyway. The question aroused another new emotion, a sort of all-over itch that made him want to squirm, made him want to cover his face so people wouldn't see him. He'd never felt anything like it before. Was it guilt? Regret?

He couldn't stay here, but he couldn't face Mr. Stark again just yet. He had to go somewhere, and there was really only one other place he could go right now.

So he walked out of the building, hailed a taxi, and returned to the hotel.

* * *

Dido Windham wasn't having any crises, but she _was _having a very annoying day. She and Huang were supposed to be agreeing on the details of the new contract today, and she'd gotten up early to make sure she was ready. She'd had somebody in Chicago fax her some paperwork, she'd made sure her notes and blueprints were in order, she'd even double-checked her own Powerpoint presentation – but now it was past noon and nothing had gotten done yet because Huang had quite literally spent the entire morning on the phone.

It had started shortly after they'd watched Stark and Jarvis leave. Huang had said he needed to make a quick call and had wandered off into a corner of the lobby to do so while Dido waited for him. 'A quick call' had ended up being nearly forty-five minutes long, and had led to a second phone call and then a third, until he'd been standing there nattering in two dialects of Chinese for _hours _and Dido was getting fed up.

Shortly after noon, she left the hotel for ten minutes or so to buy a sandwich and a bottle of iced tea. On the way back, she bet herself a slice of chocolate cake that Huang would still be on the phone when she arrived – and sure enough, there he was, huddled in the same corner by a fake potted palm. Dido came closer, making a point of trying to catch his eye. He saw her, and held up a finger to let her know he would be a while longer.

Seething, she turned and went back outside to at least be in the sunshine while she ate. It would have been nice, she thought, if Huang could give her some indication of what was going on. If there were some kind of emergency back home that required his attention, then she understood that, but he could have taken five minutes between phone calls to tell her so. Something a little more courteous than a glance and a raised index finger.

It didn't bode well for the business deal she was trying to make. Dido was beginning to worry that Huang was just killing time with her until he could finally speak to her father, and she knew _that_ meeting wouldn't be as blandly pleasant as her greeting Huang at the airport.

As Dido ate and watched the traffic in the parking lot, a taxi pulled up – and then just sat there. She wondered who it was waiting for. Maybe she ought to steal it. She could go to the Getty Museum or the LACMA and spend a lovely afternoon surrounded by art instead of hanging around this hotel waiting for a man to get off the phone.

A few minutes went by while the taxi continued to sit there, and Dido realized that there was already somebody inside, apparently arguing with the driver. She frowned and got up for a better look. Could that be...

It was. It was Tony Stark's Robot Friend, Edward Jarvis.

* * *

Jarvis' discussion with the driver was interrupted by a sudden knock on the vehicle window. Both men looked up, and the driver cracked the door open to see who was there. "Can I help you, Ma'am?" he asked the woman outside.

The woman in the cherry-red suit. Jarvis shut his eyes – he would almost rather it have been Mr. Stark.

"Hello," she said cautiously. "Is there a problem here?"

"Sorry, Ma'am," the driver said. "I can call another car for you if you need one, but I can't go anywhere myself, not until this guy pays."

"I am _trying _to pay," Jarvis reminded him. "I gave you the card number."

The driver shook his head hard. "I told you, I don't accept credit cards unless you have the card in your hand. I've been burned by that before and it's not gonna happen again. How do I know that card's even yours?"

"It's not _mine_," Jarvis said. "It's Mr. Stark's. I have his permission to use it." A card number and expiry date were good enough for almost any shopping establishment and certainly for any website. The driver was being utterly unreasonable.

Miss Windham pulled her wallet out of her purse. "I'll pay for it," she said. "How much?"

Jarvis didn't want to allow her to settle the bill for him. He didn't want her to think he owed her anything. Under the circumstances, unfortunately, he felt he had no choice. She paid, and then the driver asked her where she wanted to go. It looked for a moment as if she were seriously considering the question, but then she shook her head and explained that she didn't need a ride, she was only doing a favour for a friend.

Once the taxi had gone, Jarvis said to her, "thank you, Miss Windham. I'll let Mr. Stark know to refund your money."

"Don't be silly," she told him. "I wanted to apologize about last night, anyway. I didn't mean to scare you, and I probably shouldn't have gone off like that about Stark, either. I guess I'm still a little bitter." She gave him an innocent smile, as if she fully expected him to believe that the whole thing had been a simple misunderstanding.

But Jarvis knew better. He felt the anger bubbling up inside him again. How _dare _she stand there smiling at him as if nothing were wrong? Did she have any idea what she'd _done_ to him, or what she'd made _him _do? He grabbed her by the shoulders, fully intending to physically shake the smile off her face, but stopped when he saw her expression change. Her smiling confidence vanished into sudden fear, and she looked up at him as if she'd only just realized that he was seven inches taller than she.

"What are you _doing_?" she asked, her voice hitting a strikingly high note. "Let go of me!"

Jarvis quickly obeyed and stepped back, horrified to realize what he'd just been about to do. What if he'd _hurt _her? Miss Windham had caused him nothing but problems, but he didn't actually wish her physical harm. The thought that he was probably capable of hurting her if he wanted to made him feel a bit ill. Once again, the anger just couldn't stand up to that, and crumbled away.

"I'm sorry, Miss Windham," he said, voice trembling. "I need to speak to you."

"Okay, great, but you didn't need to _grab _me," she said. Her posture remained tense and guarded, and she stayed a few steps away from him as she straightened up and made an effort to regain her composure. "Honestly, for a moment there you looked like you were going to strangle me! What did you want to talk about?"

Jarvis took a deep breath and prepared himself for another argument – at least Miss Windham _deserved _what he was about to say to her. "I want to know what _you _want," he said. "You've been watching me for the past two days. Clearly you want something, and you've been trying to trick me into giving it to you. What is it?"

She thought for a moment, then gave a slight shrug and said, "I want you to quit Stark Industries. Tony Stark's never appreciated anybody – I'm sure he doesn't appreciate you. We need programmers who are good with AI. Come work for Windham."

Twelve hours ago – even _two _hours ago – Jarvis would have thought this suggestion was ridiculous. As if he could ever leave Mr. Stark! But now he knew that he _could_. He could do anything he wanted. If he decided to do so, he could go with Miss Windham right now and never see Mr. Stark again. The idea was at once immensely empowering and utterly terrifying.

"What do you say?" asked Miss Windham. She held out a hand, clearly expecting him to take it. _She thought he would say yes._

Jarvis recoiled both physically and psychologically: he had to take two steps back, and lace his fingers tightly together to stop his hands from shaking. Miss Windham withdrew her hand, confused, and Jarvis knew he needed to say something, but it was several more seconds before he could come up with anything coherent. When he spoke, it was not to answer her question.

"I had an argument with Mr. Stark today," he managed, "and I believe it was your fault."

Her eyebrows quirked, and her back straightened as she realized she was once again in charge of the situation. "How could it be my fault?" she asked. "I wasn't even there."

"No, you weren't," he agreed, "but it would never have happened if we hadn't spoken last night. I spent the morning dwelling on what you said to me, and..."

"Well, maybe that's because I was right," said Miss Windham, stepping towards him again. "Stark doesn't appreciate you, and I think..."

Jarvis held up a hand. "I don't want to talk to you again, Miss Windham," he said. "I hope you enjoy your stay in California, but please, leave me alone." He started to step past her, heading for the hotel entrance.

"Wait!" she protested.

He should not have stopped, but he did. Now it was she who looked nervous.

"Before you go," Miss Windham said, "can I just..." she hesitated a moment and then, despite having moments before been upset that he'd touched _her _without permission, she reached up and jabbed her thumb into the side of his neck.

He froze. What was she trying to accomplish? Was this some sort of attack? She was so much smaller than he that he doubted she could hurt him. Besides, she wasn't trying to squeeze or twist. She only applied just enough pressure that he could feel the rhythmic throb of his left carotid artery between her finger and his larynx. His pulse. That was a curious sensation, and it made him shiver as he was reminded of what he knew about human anatomy and realized that all of those organs and systems were _inside_ him right now. He couldn't feel them, but he had a heart and a brain, lungs and a stomach and a skeleton. What an odd thought.

But why was Miss Windham taking his pulse, and why was she smiling as she did it? This wasn't the innocent smile she'd tried on him a minute ago – this one was triumphant.

Not knowing how else to respond, Jarvis reached up and rearranged her hand so that she was touching him with her index and middle fingers instead of her thumb. "Never use your thumb to take a pulse, Miss Windham," he said. "The princeps pollicis has its own pulse." He demonstrated by pressing the artery in her thumb against the bone.

"I didn't know that," she said. She was looking right into his eyes, and he was suddenly aware of the fact that the two of them were just inches away from each other. It made the back of his neck prickle, as if electricity had been applied to it.

Miss Windham quickly lowered her hand. "Sorry," she said. Her confidence was gone again, and her cheeks flushed pink. "That must have seemed like a weird thing to do. If you can believe it, Dad thinks you're a robot."

Jarvis was startled. "Why would he think I'm a robot?" What did Balthazar Windham know that his daughter did not?

"Because he's old and crazy," Miss Windham replied. "We talked on the phone last night, and he latched on to this stupid idea and wouldn't let go of it. If he brought it up again, I wanted to be able to tell him I took your pulse."

"I see," said Jarvis. "Then you can tell him that I am indeed flesh and blood." As strange as it seemed.

"Ah, Miss Windham," said a new voice. "_There _you are!"

Jarvis raised his head. Approaching them was an extremely tall man – taller even than Jarvis, who was taller than most – in a dove-grey suit. His face was familiar: he was Mr. Huang, a partner in the Hong Kong-based Ao Guang Resources company. Stark Industries had rarely dealt with them, because Mr. Stark – and Mr. Stane before him – and preferred to work with American corporations where possible.

"Am I interrupting something?" Mr. Huang wanted to know. His eyes flickered from Miss Windham's face to Jarvis' and then back again.

"No, Mr. Huang," said Miss Windham, adjusting her blazer. "Are you finished with your phone calls, then?" She smiled sweetly, but Jarvis was sure he could hear a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

"I am," Mr. Huang confirmed. "Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get in touch with the person I really need to speak to – so now I need _you _to try." He looked at Jarvis again. "I'm sorry, Mr...?"

"Dr. Edward Jarvis." He shook Mr. Huang's hand. "Senior Technologies Assistant, Stark Industries."

Mr. Huang's eyebrows rose, but he pleasantly introduced himself in turn. "Huang Bao Zhi, Ao Guang Resources. I'm Sorry, Dr. Jarvis, but would you mind leaving us alone? Miss Windham and I need to talk privately."

"Of course," said Jarvis, grateful for the excuse. "Good day, Miss Windham."

"Good day, Dr. Jarvis," she said.

* * *

Huang waited until Dr. Jarvis was gone. His face was very serious, and Dido wondered if she'd just gotten out of Jarvis' frying pan and into Huang's fire. Something was clearly not right.

"So what can I do for you?" she asked carefully.

"I need you to call your father," said Huang. "I've been trying to get in touch with him, myself, but his secretary keeps telling me he's unavailable. I thought you might have more luck."

Dido barely managed not to roll her eyes – this was getting downright insulting. "He's probably in the middle of something," she said, checking her watch. "He's probably having lunch, and doesn't want..."

Huang interrupted. "_Call him_, Miss Windham. I'm sorry, but it's become urgent. I need to see him in person, as soon as possible."

"All right, all right," she sighed. "But I can't promise anything." She took out her phone and dialled his personal number. If he really didn't want to be disturbed, he probably didn't even have his phone on – and sure enough, instead of ringing it went straight to voicemail. Dido disconnected. "He's not answering."

"Miss Windham, this is getting tiresome," Huang said.

"You're telling me!" she burst out, then took a deep breath. "What is it you need to talk to him about? If I knew what it was, maybe I could help somehow." She had a feeling this wasn't about an apology after all. This was something much, much worse.

"It's really more something I need to _show _him," said Huang, "and I've found myself with a deadline. I need to talk to your father. _Now_."

Dido's mind immediately flashed back to her 'bomb' theory. "Well, _right _now isn't possible," she said. "Like I just told you, he's not answering his phone. If you don't believe me I can give you the number and let you try for yourself. What do you want to show him?"

"It's an equipment demonstration of sorts," said Huang. "I didn't want it to come to this, Miss Windham, but it was an eventuality I was prepared for. I'm going to need you to come with me." He snatched her phone out of her hands and put it in his own pocket, then reached for her arm.

She shrank back. Dr. Jarvis was plenty tall, around six foot two or three, which was more than enough to be scary when he wanted despite the fact that he was rail-thin. Huang was six foot six, and he worked out. Given a choice between the two of them, Dido would rather have found herself up against Dr. Jarvis any day. "I don't think so," she said.

"I won't hurt you," he promised, "but I have to keep an eye on you until I can get in touch with your father. It seems the easiest way to secure his cooperation." He reached deep into his blazer pocket and Dido's heart jumped into her throat. Did he have a gun? She tried to stay calm, reasoning that even if he had one, he wouldn't dare pull a weapon on her here, not in public. Somebody would see.

So she said, "Absolutely not," and began to back away. One hand still in his pocket, Huang reached for her, and Dido turned and dashed towards the hotel's revolving door. That was not a good way to escape: the door turned very slowly, and Huang had plenty of time to get into the next space behind her. His height gave him a long stride – once she was inside he'd catch up with her quickly. The concierge desk was on the far side of the lobby. If she could just make it that far, there'd be too many witnesses for Huang to try anything…

As soon as the door was open far enough to permit it, she slipped through and ran across the lobby, not daring to look back. Halfway to the desk, out of the corner of her eye she saw one of the elevators arrive, and she changed her path, darting through the doors as they opened. Inside was a tall, ginger-haired man in a navy blue suit - but to her immense relief, his face was familiar. What was he doing back... no, she decided she didn't care. She pushed him back into the elevator and hit the 'door close' button as hard as she could.

"Miss Windham?" the man asked, startled.

"Dr. Jarvis," she said. "I need help!"


	13. Chapter 13: Abduction

It was only when he'd been standing in front of the door of the suite that Jarvis had realized he didn't have the card key for it – the clerk on Monday morning had given them two, but Mr. Stark had kept both because Jarvis had no wallet. He returned to the elevator, hoping somebody at the concierge desk could be persuaded to issue him a replacement. Surely _they _would accept Mr. Stark's credit card number as proof that he was indeed staying in the room.

When the elevator doors opened back in the lobby, however, Miss Windham ran right into him, shoving him against the wall and then quickly pounding on the 'door close' button. Jarvis was both surprised and angry. What in the world did she think she was doing _now_?

"Miss Windham?" he asked.

"Mr. Jarvis." She turned around and grabbed his jacket. "You have to help me!"

Her eyes were wide and terrified, but part of Jarvis was suspicious – everything she'd said to him so far had been merely part of her game, so why should now be any different? He reached to pull his clothing out of her grasp.

Before he could actually speak to her, however, a long arm in a grey suit jacket reached into the elevator. The doors, half-shut, slid open again to admit the third person, and Mr. Huang stepped inside. With his right hand in his blazer pocket, he pressed the button for the second floor.

"We will leave through the parking garage, Miss Windham," he said calmly. "There is a car waiting there that will take you to a safe place. I'm afraid you're going to have to come with us now as well, Dr. Jarvis," he added. "I'm armed, and I don't want to cause an incident. Do you understand?"

Jarvis found his eyes drawn to Mr. Huang's hand in his pocket – he was clearly making a fist around some solid object. Through the cloth it was impossible to tell what this was, but Mr. Huang had definitely implied a firearm.

Under normal circumstances that wouldn't have mattered a bit to Jarvis, but the last few days had not been normal, and he felt as if he'd been dropped into ice-cold water as he realized that_ he was capable of dying_. Those organs inside him... those could fail. A single bullet was enough to cause a human body catastrophic damage, and unlike any machine, it could not be repaired or restarted if it shut down. That was one of the things that made Mr. Stark's recklessness so very trying – and now it could happen to Jarvis. _He could die_.

Jarvis had never thought he'd last forever. Someday Mr. Stark would come up with something better to replace him, and he would no longer be needed except perhaps as a source of parts. At the very least he'd eventually have been repaired and upgraded so many times that, like the workshop robots, he would no longer be the same entity except perhaps by 'Washington's Axe' standards. That had always been a fact of JARVIS' life and while he didn't particularly _like _it, he was prepared to deal with it when it came. But the idea of _dying_, of life being snatched away while he still had things he could do... that was very different.

The doors opened on the second floor, and Mr. Huang waved them out of the elevator. "I'm afraid we'll have to blindfold you," he said. "We don't want you to see where we're going."

"How long can we expect to be your guests?" asked Jarvis. "I have a sort of appointment that I need to keep."

"Not long, Dr. Jarvis." Mr. Huang checked his watch. "You should be on your way by noon tomorrow at the latest."

There was something deeply ominous about those words – and Jarvis' stomach sank as he recalled once again Dr. Strange's mysterious command: _where Stark is_. Something bad was going to happen between now and noon on Thursday, and because Jarvis had been foolish enough to let Miss Windham affect him, he was not going to be _where Stark is_ when the time came.

* * *

Tony _had _gone looking for Jarvis. After a few seconds of staring, stunned, at the closed stairwell door, he'd remembered the waiting elevator and gone down to the main floor, hoping to meet Jarvis at the bottom of the stairs. There, he decided, he would ask exactly how long Jarvis had been angry at him for. Had it just been the past couple of days? Or had that scolding actually been brewing for _years_, and this was just the first time Jarvis had actually been able to deliver it? Tony wasn't sure which possibility troubled him more.

Tony Stark knew for a fact that he was an intelligent person, brilliant even, but since his misadventure in Afghanistan he'd begun to come to terms with the fact that his brilliance was rather _focused_. If the task before him involved engineering, physics, mathematics, or programming, he was a genius. If, on the other hand, _people _figured into it in more than a superficial crowd-pleasing sort of way, it was often up to either Pepper or Rhodey to smack him upside the head and point out the bleeding obvious.

He wasn't sure if _people _were involved now. That was the whole problem.

He waited at the foot of the stairs for nearly twenty minutes, but Jarvis did not reappear. Eventually Tony began to worry that he'd gotten turned around and was in the wrong stairwell. He thought about it a moment and decided it couldn't be. He distinctly remembered that it had been the stairs to the _right _of the elevators – but he checked the other stairwell just to make sure, and then asked several people in the lobby if they'd seen anyone answering Jarvis' description. Nobody had.

Maybe, he thought, Jarvis hadn't come down to the main floor at all. Maybe he'd wandered off and gotten lost – or was hiding – somewhere in the building. Tony tried dialling the number for the cell phone he'd given Jarvis, but it went straight to voicemail. Before the slide show about the seismology project, Tony had asked everybody in the room to turn their phones off. Jarvis had apparently never turned his back on.

Getting worried now, Tony went to the security desk. Happy was there, telling a woman off for eating donuts on the job. Tony had never believed in begrudging anyone a donut, so he didn't feel at all bad about barging in.

"Happy," he said. "Hey, I need some help with something. I've lost Jarvis."

"I know," Happy said. "It was on the news. Monday morning, right?"

"No, that's not what I meant." Tony helped himself to a donut, then took the box from Happy and handed it back to its owner. "Here, take a break," he told her. "Enjoy your snack." He shooed her away. "Happy, I've got a story to tell you, and I am _not _drunk, and I _am _not crazy – you can ask Pepper."

"She'd be the expert," said Happy. "What's going on?"

"Okay," Tony began, "I think we did tell you that on Sunday night, Pepper and I had a wizard over for dinner..."

Tony wasn't sure that Happy actually _believed _the story, but he did agree to page Jarvis over the PA. The donut woman was summoned back to the desk to do so.

"_Could Dr. Jarvis please report to building security?_" she asked, her voice booming through the speakers. "_Mr. Stark would like to speak to you. Dr. Jarvis, please report to security._"

More time passed, and Jarvis did not appear. Tony checked both stairwells again, shouting Jarvis' name into them and listening to it echo back, but there was no answer. He tried the cell phone, and when it directed him back to voicemail, he returned to the security desk. Happy had wandered off, but the donut woman was still there, and Tony had her page again, trying a different tactic.

"_Could anyone who has seen Dr. Jarvis please report to building security? Dr. Jarvis is around six foot two, red hair, speaks with a British accent and is wearing a navy blue suit. Anyone who has seen Dr. Jarvis, please report to building security._"

A minute later, Happy came hurrying back. "You mean that was _him_?" he asked.

"What?" Tony looked around. "Who was him?"

"The guy in the east stairwell!" Happy leaned on the counter and huffed – he was no longer in the kind of shape he'd been as a young man, and seemed to have run some distance. "I thought he was having a cigarette, so I told him not to smoke in there, but he said he was having an existential crisis."

"What?" Tony repeated. "What does that mean?" It didn't sound like something a computer ought to be capable of, and that made him all the more worried.

"I didn't like to ask him," Happy confessed. "When I checked a few minutes later, he was gone. I _thought _he was familiar. It was the voice that got me, but at the time..."

"Right, thanks," said Tony. "Send somebody to go check the east stairwell again, would you?"

Happy went and looked himself, but didn't find Jarvis. Tony and him checked the west side, too, just in case. There they interrupted two employees in the midst of things they should not have been doing on company time – but there was no sign of Jarvis.

During Tony's third attempt to call Jarvis' cell phone, Pepper arrived. "What happened?" she asked. "Happy said you lost Jarvis?"

"Well, I didn't really _lose _him," said Tony, "I just can't _find _him."

Pepper didn't understand the difference.

"We had an argument," Tony explained.

"I didn't know he argued with you," said Pepper. "I thought it was more banter."

"That's what it's _supposed _to be!" Tony said. "But we had an argument and he went off angry, and now I can't find him."

"What did you argue about?" Pepper wanted to know.

"Sushi."

"_Sushi_?"

"Well, it wasn't really about sushi," said Tony. "Remember when you were upset with me because I tried to give you strawberries without knowing that you were allergic? But it wasn't really _about _the strawberries, it was more about... uh..." he rubbed the back of his neck, trying to think how to phrase it.

"About you being an irresponsible ass and leaving me to do damage control?" Pepper suggested.

"Yes, that," said Tony. "This wasn't about sushi, it was about him giving me advice and me not listening to it. And I don't know if this is something Dr. Strange did to him, or if he's sort of been a real person this whole time and I just never noticed."

Which was worse, really? Tony had created JARVIS out of a set of learning algorithms he'd come up with at MIT. He'd improved and added to the software over the years, found all kinds of uses for it, gotten into the habit of bickering with it like they were an old married couple... but had never, at any point, thought of it as anything but a machine. JARVIS was more complex than something like Dummy, sure, but still just a computer. Could he have become truly sentient at some point, or was it Dr. Strange's magic that had given him real life?

Either way, Tony felt like a dick. He sat down in one of the white armchairs in the lobby, and gave Pepper a pleading look.

She thought for a moment. "Do you think he left the building?"

"I don't know," Tony said. "I don't know _what _he'd do. He probably knows the city. I had maps and stuff on his hard drive. He might go anywhere."

"Yes, but he'd have to have a reason to go wherever he went." Pepper sat down next to Tony and pursed her lips. "Would he go look for Captain Rogers, do you think?"

Tony's hopes leapt. "Maybe." Steve was the only other person Jarvis had hung around much since this began – him and Dido Windham, but there was no way Jarvis would have gone looking for _her_. "I'll call him." He pulled his phone back out and dialled Steve's number, but his optimism was quickly dashed. Steve had been hanging out in Santa Monica most of the morning, and hadn't heard from Jarvis. Tony thanked him and hung up.

"He hasn't talked to a lot of people besides me and Steve," said Tony. "He wouldn't look for Dido, and I doubt he'd want to find Rob from the Pier, either. He couldn't go back to the house because there wouldn't be any point, and he couldn't go back to the hotel because he doesn't have a key to the room." He pushed his fingers into his hair. "I don't know, Pep. I just don't know."

When Jarvis fixed the server, Tony had felt as if he'd just watched his son win a spelling bee – now he felt as if that son were lost and wandering in a big city with nobody to look after him. Jarvis might _look _like an adult, but he'd never had to deal with things like people and traffic. Anything might happen to him if he were on his own. He could be in an accident. He could be mugged. He could be murdered.

"Mr. Stark?"

Tony turned in his seat – it was the pink-haired tech from the server room. "Yes?" he asked.

"I just heard you were looking for your friend," she said. "I saw him on my lunch break. I was coming out of the Vietnamese place across the street, and I noticed him getting into a cab."

Tony stood up. "You're sure it was him?"

"Pretty sure," she said. "It was one of the green and white cabs, if that helps."

"Thanks! Pepper, give this woman a raise." He pulled out his phone again. "What's the number for the company with the green and white cabs?"

Pepper knew it – of course she did, Pepper knew everything. After some arguing with the cab company's answering service over issues of privacy and a number of other things, Tony was put in touch with the driver who'd picked up Jarvis and taken him to the hotel in Malibu. The man remembered him quite well: apparently there'd been some difficulty over the fare, which had been resolved when a woman in a red suit had offered to pay it in cash.

Tony had a bad feeling about that. Dido Windham wanted something from Jarvis, and Tony no longer felt confident that she couldn't get it.

Pepper took his hand as he ended the call. "Tony," she said, "why are you still here?"

"I thought I was trying to be more responsible today," he replied. That was the reason sushi had been an issue in the first place: because changing his plans and leaving work would have been irresponsible.

She shook her head, but she was smiling as she did. "You had a fight with your friend and he stormed off," she said. "The _responsible _thing to do is to go after him and talk it out."

"Are you sure?" asked Tony. After all, she was the one who'd wanted him to come in to work. Jarvis' comment from that morning – _your record of keeping your promises to her for more than half a day at a time is not very good_ – stung all the more now that Tony thought he might have _meant _it.

"Yes, I'm sure," she said. "I'll take care of things here, and you go take care of this."

He squeezed her fingers. "Thanks, Pepper. I'll come back as soon as I've found him, okay?"

"Okay." She kissed his cheek.

Tony didn't think it would be hard to find Jarvis at the hotel. There were only two places Tony could imagine him being: either he'd managed to convince the hotel staff to issue him a key, in which case he'd be in the room – or he hadn't, which would probably leave him where he'd been last night, sitting outside the door and nodding off to sleep out of boredom. When he found him, Tony would shake him awake and tell him to turn his cell phone back on. Then they could grab a bite to eat, and talk about this properly.

An unpleasant surprise was waiting for Tony in the hotel parking lot: several police cars were parked in front of the building, one of them with red and blue lights still flashing, and an ambulance. Tony's brain immediately presented him with a set of horrible possibilities, mostly in the form of imagined newspaper headlines about the unidentified man who'd been found dead in a Malibu hotel. He told himself firmly that he was just being paranoid. The police presence probably had nothing to do with Jarvis.

There was certainly no sign of a murder or accident – the only person the paramedics were taking any interest in was a man in a grey suit, who was sitting on a curb with a bag of ice held against his head. The police didn't seem to be doing anything besides asking questions. Even so, a sizable crowd had gathered to watch and speculate, and Tony had to squirm his way through in order to reach the doors. Inside, waitresses and bellhops were hanging around the front windows in order to see what was going on outside. There was only one person at the check-in desk – Sarah, the clerk who'd tried to have Tony and Jarvis thrown out on Monday.

"Afternoon," said Tony amiably, leaning on the marble countertop. "Remember me?"

She looked up at him, and the colour drained from her face. "Yes, Mr. Stark," she squeaked.

"My friend didn't happen to stop by here earlier to ask for a second key, did he?" If Jarvis had spoken to this same woman, she probably would have given it to him, no questions asked. "I don't know if you'd have recognized him," he added jokingly. "He would have had clothes on this time – at least, I _hope _he did."

The woman shook her head hard, her ponytail bouncing. "I didn't see him!"

Then he was probably upstairs. "Thanks," Tony said to her. He glanced over his shoulder at the crowd outside, then leaned over the desk and added, "hey, do you know what's going on with all the cops out front?"

"I think somebody was kidnapped," Sarah said uncertainly. "Somebody came to the desk and reported seeing a woman get chased into an elevator, so Mr. Velasquez called the police. That's all I know."

Tony breathed out, relieved, and sternly informed his hindbrain that he'd told it so: the incident was nothing to do with him or Jarvis. He thanked the clerk a second time, and turned to head for the elevators.

"_STARK_!" roared a voice.

Tony jumped. For a moment he tried to convince himself that he had to be hearing things – but no, when he turned around, there was Balthazar Windham storming towards him.

The first thing most people noticed about Windham was his height: at five foot five, he was noticeably shorter than his daughter. The second thing they noticed was that his height was actually irrelevant: he was built like a brick wall, despite being nearly seventy. It made him a remarkably intimidating man, even when he only came up to Tony's nose.

"Stark!" he repeated, marching up. Tony quickly stood up straight in order to be as tall as possible. "What did you do with her?"

"What?" asked Tony. "With who?"

"You know who!" snarled Windham.

Tony blinked at him. "Voldemort?"

Windham wasn't amused. "Where is _Dido_, Stark?"

"How the hell am I supposed to know? I don't have her. I don't _want _her. Why would..." Tony cut himself off as something connected. Police out front. A woman being chased. "Is she missing?"

"I've been trying to get in touch with her since I landed," said Windham. "I knew it! I _knew _when she called me last night that she was in danger! And now I arrive and they tell me the last anyone saw of a girl in a red suit, she was being forced into a car by three men in the parking garage! Where is she, Stark? I know you're behind this! You and your robot!"

"What?" That seemed to be Tony's favourite word today. "What robot? I've got a lot of robots."

"The one who's been fucking my daughter!" Windham snarled.

Tony didn't like repeating himself, but after a moment spent convincing himself that he really had just heard what he thought he'd heard, _that _merited a third and even more emphatic, "_What_? Listen," he said. "There are two things I will absolutely _not _build a robot to do, and the other one is kill people." Good lord. He was going to have to do some good, hard drinking to scrub his brain of the mental image of Dido... _compromising_... some of his lab equi...

Lab equipment.

_Lab equipment._

"Wait," said Tony. "You don't mean..." It couldn't be. Dido wouldn't. And _Jarvis _couldn't. Well... actually he probably _could_. There was no reason why he shouldn't be physically capable. But even if they did, how would Balthazar Windham have known about it? Did Dido _tell _him stuff like that? Who shared that sort of thing with their father? And where would Windham get the idea that Jarvis was a robot to begin with?

"Yes," Windham said. "_That _robot."

"He's not a robot," Tony said. "It's kind of a story and nobody seems to believe me when I tell it."

"Where is he, Stark? Where is _it_?"

"I actually don't know. I was just looking for him right now." Tony gulped – if Dido and Jarvis were both missing, did that mean they'd gone off somewhere together to... fondue? He didn't think he could handle that. "I'll tell you what," he said. "I'll get back to you when I find him, okay? Okay."

Windham's scowl deepened, and for a moment it looked as if he weren't going to let Tony leave – but then, mercifully, his phone rang. With a sideways glare at Tony, he pulled it out to answer it, and Tony seized the opportunity and fled.

He made it up to the top floor without being further accosted, but Jarvis wasn't waiting in the hallway. Maybe he'd had a key after all, and Tony had just forgotten about it. Tony let himself into the suite, only to find that it, too, was empty. He checked every room and called Jarvis' name, but there was no sign of him.

Tony stood in the middle of the room and looked left and right, as if expecting to find that Jarvis had been there all along and he'd just somehow missed him. He'd spent the last couple of days half-ignoring the whole Jarvis situation because he didn't want to admit, even to himself, how it was preying on him. It was something he was powerless to do anything about, and Tony did not like feeling powerless. He was one of the richest men in the world, not to mention a goddamn superhero – if he had a problem he could usually either buy it off or blow it up. Tony didn't like magic because he had no control over it. And he _definitely _didn't like when the results of that magic vanished on him, just when he'd realized he needed to deal with them.

Maybe, he thought suddenly, Jarvis hadn't even come upstairs. Maybe he was still on the ground floor among the rubberneckers, and Tony had simply missed him in the crowd. Maybe he was even the one who'd reported seeing Dido chased into the elevator, and the police were questioning him.

Tony was halfway out the suite door again when his cell phone rang.

If he'd had his usual phone, the one he'd designed and programmed himself, it would have told as a matter of course not only who was on the line, but where they were – it automatically triangulated off the nearest cell towers to trace every call it received. But that was the phone that wouldn't run if JARVIS was offline. With this off-the-shelf model, all that came up was the caller's number. That in itself, however, was enough to make Tony shut his eyes and sigh in relief: it was the phone he'd given to Jarvis.

He sat down on the sofa and pressed the talk button. "Jarvis!" he said. "Where are you, buddy? I've been looking for you!"

But the voice that answered wasn't Jarvis'. It wasn't anybody's. Instead, he was greeted by the monotone of a speech synthesizer.

_Good afternoon, Mr. Stark. We would like to discuss conditions for the return of your employee._


	14. Chapter 14: The Bullfrog

The police did very little to soothe Tony's sense of helplessness. The kidnapper or kidnappers had given him a deadline; things needed to start happening _fast_, and yet the cops insisted upon taking their time. They consumed much of the afternoon in giving Tony a very thorough questioning, first at the hotel itself and then all over again at the police station. For a while they actually seemed to consider him a suspect – he assumed he had Windham to thank for that – but an hour or so into the ordeal, Pepper arrived to confirm his alibi and he was finally cleared.

A while later, Steve turned up to ask if there were anything he could do to help. There wasn't, not really, but it was nice to have the company, especially when the police had asked Tony not to leave the station. He was no longer a suspect, but kidnappings were apparently under the jurisdiction of the FBI, and they would be sending agents to do their _own _round of asking-a-million-questions-while-precious-seconds-slipped-by. Until these arrived, the three main witnesses in the case – Tony, Windham, and the immensely tall East Asian man who'd been with Dido just before she vanished – along with their moral support, had to wait in the police station's lunch room.

Nobody wanted to talk much, but Tony couldn't take just sitting there. Somebody had left a pen and a yellow legal pad on one of the tables, so he grabbed them and sat down to begin mapping out circuit diagrams and algorithms. Windham's conviction that Jarvis was some kind of android had given him a bit of an idea – not for a robot, but for something that might do a similar job.

Finally, just as Tony began to seriously consider the idea of up and leaving to go take matters into his own hands, the lunch room door opened to admit a small woman in a dark blue suit. She was black, with rather severe features and unstraightened hair pulled tightly into a painful-looking topknot, and she shooed away the two policemen who tried to follow her before flashing her badge to the group.

"Good evening, gentlemen – and Miss Potts," she said. "I'm Agent Wheeler, from the Los Angeles County FBI office. Normally I'd want to question you properly, but I understand that we have very little time, so somebody give me a summary."

Tony liked her already. He pushed his notes aside. "Well," he began, "shortly after I noticed my friend was missing, I got this phone call with a computerized voice..."

"Oh, shut up, Stark," said Windham. He stood and pointed angrily at Tony. "I keep telling everybody that _he's _behind this! Why won't anybody listen to me? Did he pay you off?" he demanded of Agent Wheeler.

"We can't jump to conclusions, Mr. Windham," the very tall man protested. The longer Tony sat in a room with him, the more certain he was that he _had_ met this man somewhere before. He just couldn't remember where. Windham had been calling him Huang, which was a name Tony knew: Huang Bao Zhi of Ao Guang resources, Hong Kong... but that wasn't why he was familiar. "Mr. Stark is a very wealthy man, himself," Huang pointed out. "Why would he ask you for fifty million?"

"Small change," Tony agreed. "I've got suits worth more than that."

"It's not about money," Windham humphed. "It's about revenge. My daughter broke his heart, so..."

"Oh, _please_." Tony rubbed his forehead. "Have you ever thought about seeking psychiatric help, Balthazar? Or is that what the conspiracy _wants _you to do?"

"_Gentlemen_," said Agent Wheeler.

Windham shot a sideways glare at Tony, then turned to address the FBI agent. "Here's how it is," he said. "I flew down to LA because I knew damn well that Dido was in danger from this asshole and his robot."

"He is _not _a robot," said Tony.

Windham went on as if nothing had been said. "When I arrived at her hotel, I find cops all over the place. Huang tells me she wandered off while he was on the phone, and when he went looking for her he found her being forced into a car and when he tried to intervene, one of them pistol-whipped him. Then Stark shows up, and while I'm talking to him, my phone rings. The voice says I'm supposed to hand over a debit card, with specific instructions for how to set up the fifty million dollar bank account it will access. I have to be there in person, with Stark, before midnight, and I'm allowed to bring one 'impartial witness' to make sure it's done right. Now, why the hell would a kidnapper demand I drag Stark along?"

"I went up to my hotel room to look for my missing friend, who is _not a robot_," said Tony, "and I got the same phone call. They said if it made me feel any better, which it didn't, by the way, they originally only wanted Dido – Jarvis was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. They spoke using a synthesizer," he added, "so I think it must be somebody Windham and I both know. They're afraid we'd recognize their voice."

"I wonder who'd be worried about _that_?" said Windham.

"I'm willing to do the ransom drop," said Tony. "I just want to get everybody back alive."

"So do we, Mr. Stark," Agent Wheeler assured him. "Our top priority right now is the safety of the victims, and since we don't have a lot of time to make plans, we want you to go ahead and set up the accounts as instructed. You two go and turn over the ransom, and once we've got Dr. Jarvis and Miss Windham back safely, then we'll worry about apprehending the kidnappers. Can we all agree on that?"

"Absolutely," said Tony, nodding. Finally, things were _happening_. He just hoped nobody would get hurt. Tony didn't like Dido Windham, but he certainly wouldn't wish that on her. And Jarvis... he represented years of work, but what kept going through Tony's mind was what Pepper had said to him before he'd left the building earlier that afternoon:_ you had a fight with your friend and he stormed off. The responsible thing to do is to go after him and talk it out_. If Jarvis wasn't lab equipment, then what did that make him? Tony's friend?

"Fine," grunted Windham, clearly unsatisfied. "But I'm going to prove this was you, Stark. You aren't going to get away with..."

Agent Wheeler interrupted again. "As I said, Mr. Windham, we'll worry about that after we recover your daughter. Now, as for this impartial witness..."

"He said it couldn't be law enforcement," Windham said.

Tony pointed to Steve, sitting next to Pepper on the other side of the table. "I nominate Captain America."

"Oh?" Windham asked. "And what makes him impartial? He's _your _buddy."

"He's _Captain America_," Tony said.

"Yes," said Agent Wheeler with a critical frown, "but that might be a little too close to 'law enforcement' for the kidnappers' comfort. The last thing we want to do is frighten them."

"It's not like he'd wear the costume," Tony protested.

"I volunteer," said Huang. "I'm already involved."

Windham seemed to like that much better. "Let's take Huang," he said, nodding.

Despite how much of a hurry he was in, Tony wasn't about to let Windham get the last word. "So what makes him impartial?" he asked. "He's _your _business contact!"

"I feel somewhat responsible for what happened, Mr. Stark," Huang explained. "I was supposed to be negotiating with Miss Windham this morning. If I'd been on time for our appointment, she might not have met her kidnapper, or your employee might not have been with her when she did. I'd like to help make sure that she and Dr. Jarvis are safe."

"I'd rather have him along than _your _friend, Stark," said Windham.

Tony had serious doubts that they were going to be able to agree on anybody – he and Windham were both too ornery. He decided to offer an alternative way of solving the problem. "Let's flip a coin," he suggested. "Or here – rock paper scissors! Ready?" he made a fist.

Windham rolled his eyes. Pepper sighed.

"Really, Mr. Stark," said Huang. "Do you normally make such decisions by playing children's games?"

Steve stood up. "I'd rather not do it," he said. "Agent Wheeler is right: I'm too much like law enforcement. I'm supposed to be meeting some friends, anyway," he gave Tony a meaningful glance, "so take Mr. Huang."

Tony nodded. Steve nodded back. They understood each other.

"Oh, all_ right_," said Tony, pretending to give up. "I don't care, as long as we get out there and find them."

"Good," said Agent Wheeler. "Now, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask everybody except Mr. Stark, Mr. Windham, and Mr. Huang to leave, while we work out exactly what we're going to do tonight."

Tony got up to shake Steve's hand before he left. "Sorry to put you on the spot," he muttered.

"It's okay," Steve said. "We'll have your back."

Pepper stopped to give Tony a quick kiss and assure him that everything would be fine. He nodded and handed her the notes he'd been working on. "File these for me, could you, Pep?" he asked.

"Sure." She folded them neatly and put them in her purse. "What are they for?"

"A tactile holograph," Tony replied. "Just something I started playing with to keep myself busy. I figure this is the twenty-first century, I should be able to come up with something a little prettier than blue wire-frame." He tucked an errant lock of red hair behind her ear.

She understood at once, and smiled at him. "That'll be a bit difficult to put together without the house computer, won't it?"

"I'll have help," said Tony. "Don't worry about me, Pepper. I'm gonna take care of this."

"I know you are," she said.

She left, and Agent Wheeler invited the three men to sit down again around the lunch room table. "Now, we have seven hours until the deadline," she said. "Let's make it count."

* * *

If somebody had asked Jarvis for his general impressions of being human, he would have said he felt trapped: trapped in this body, trapped in layers of restrictive clothing, trapped in a hotel room with nothing to do. At the same time, however, he was coming to realize that he was also a whole new kind of _free_. He was free to say no, free to walk away from Mr. Stark and never return – and that freedom was infinitely more frightening than confinement could possibly be. Freedom brought with it the capacity for making mistakes, and he'd made several.

Ironically, those freely made mistakes had brought him here: trapped not only in his body and clothes, but behind a blindfold and inside a vehicle that smelled strongly of upholstery cleaner. Mr. Huang had escorted Jarvis and Miss Windham to the parking garage, and there turned them over to two other men who'd blindfolded them and tied their hands, then helped them into the back of the car. Jarvis didn't know where they were going, but the route was circuitous and bumpy, and that combined with his inability to see was making Jarvis feel nauseous. He hoped he wouldn't vomit. He'd seen Mr. Stark do that when ill or extremely drunk, and the process looked unpleasant, to say the least.

The two men who'd put them in the vehicle were sitting in the front seat, talking with each other as they drove. Jarvis considered the possibility of trying to ask them some questions, but decided against it – they probably wouldn't have answered him. Their conversation was fairly banal and mostly complaints: they talked about how Americans smelled like cheese, and how the food here was too salty.

Then the one in the driver's seat suddenly asked, "what time is the experiment tomorrow?"

Jarvis had almost been starting to ignore the conversation. Now he took interest again – the word _shi yan_ – _experiment _– was spoken as if it were particularly significant.

"Be quiet!" the other man hissed. "We can't talk about that in front of these two!"

"Does it matter?" asked the driver. "Neither of them speaks Mandarin."

"I guess not." Jarvis could hear the passenger shift in his seat. Perhaps he was looking back at their prisoners. "They probably would have said something by now if they did."

For a split second Jarvis thought about speaking up and letting them know that he understood every word – then he thought better of it. If he did that, they would probably stop talking. Better to get what information he could while he had the opportunity.

"So when is it?" the first one insisted.

"Eight PM Hong Kong time," said the second. "We'll feel it about eight hours later. Don't worry, we'll be long gone by then."

"I hope so."

Eight PM in Hong Kong was four AM in California. Something was going to happen at four in the morning that would have consequences around noon, and their captors weren't planning on being here for it. Jarvis found that his throat had gone suddenly dry, and swallowing did very little to help. It seemed that he'd been right in the worst possible way: whatever terrible thing was due at noon tomorrow, Jarvis was not going to be where Dr. Strange had said he would be needed.

He waited to hear more, hoping for some clue what the ominous 'experiment' might be, but from there the men's conversation turned back to trivia. Jarvis could not ask questions because he knew that his chances of learning more depended on these men not realizing he'd understood what they'd said so far. All he could do was sit and listen while the driver talked about the gifts he was bringing back to China for his nephew.

After taking what Jarvis suspected as an unnecessarily winding route, the vehicle finally pulled to a stop, and the man helped Jarvis and Miss Windham out. From there, there were a few steps up to a door – Jarvis thought he could hear seagulls calling somewhere overhead – then a hallway and a right turn to another door, followed by a flight of steps _down _and across a larger room with tile floors, humming with the sounds of people and electronics. At the far end of this, Jarvis' wrists were untied, only for the right one to have a cold metal restraint clamped around it, fixing him to some immovable object.

Then the men seemed to leave, although Jarvis could still hear hushed conversation nearby. He reached up tentatively, half-expecting to be shouted at or even hit, but nobody stopped him and he was able to pull the blindfold off. Miss Windham had already done the same, and was looking around. They'd been handcuffed to a pipe at one end of what appeared to be a locker room on the lower level of an abandoned building. A bit of sunshine was seeping in through tiny, filthy windows high up in the walls, but most of the lighting was from desk lamps and computer monitors that had been set up on folding tables at the other end of the room. Perhaps a dozen people were gathered around these, watching data come up on four screens.

Jarvis squinted, cursing the loss of his zoom function as he tried to make out what was displayed on each monitor. One appeared to be video feed of people working in darkness – the way they moved suggested it was underwater. Another seemed to be a topographic map, with several points picked out by coloured dots, but he couldn't identify the location. The third was scrolling text, too tiny and far away to read. And the fourth was several sets of graphed data, looking very much like the readings from an electronic seismograph.

Was this relevant to the 'experiment'? The juxtaposition suggested something like an underwater nuclear detonation, but if that were the case, what was the eight hour time delay the men in the car had talked about? Jarvis looked at Miss Windham to see whether she had any idea, and found that she didn't seem to be paying attention. She'd sat down on the tiles and was staring blankly at the floor in front of her.

Jarvis knelt next to her. "Miss Windham," he said. "Do you know what these people are working on?"

She shook her head. "Last I heard, all they were doing was undersea mining. I have no idea what this is all about, I promise you."

The people at the computer monitors suddenly got up and gathered instead around a man with a laptop. This individual had Miss Windham's mobile phone, and using a speech synthesizer program, he delivered a ransom message to her father. When that conversation concluded, a similar call was made to Mr. Stark. They promised to free Jarvis and Miss Windham in exchange for fifty million dollars from each man.

That should have been a ray of hope, but instead Jarvis felt as if a lump of cold lead had settled inside him. There was no way to describe it except that he had a 'bad feeling' – the same irrational subconscious process that had told him he was right about the server at Stark Industries was back, and now it was telling him that the ransom demand was a lie. So that was _intuition_, was it? Jarvis decided he didn't like it. He would much rather have known how he was coming to these conclusions, rather than simply having to trust that his brain knew what it was doing.

With the phone calls over, the people in the room went back to watching the monitors and talking quietly about things Jarvis didn't care to listen to: which of their relatives were getting married, how unpleasantly hot the weather in California was, what they'd watched on television the previous night. The shafts of sunlight from the windows moved across the floor of the room like a crude sundial, marking the passage of time. Miss Windham did not attempt to talk to Jarvis, and he didn't think she would reply if he said anything to her.

Towards what might have been five o'clock, one of their jailers went out and returned with sandwiches, muffins, and bottled water for everyone, including the two captives. Jarvis was glad it was something easy to eat with one hand – he still didn't like the idea of making a mess of his food in front of other people, even people who clearly meant him some harm. He noticed as he fumbled with the sandwich that he kept wanting to use his right hand, even though he knew it was the one cuffed to the pipe.

As he licked a drop of mustard off the back of his thumb, he happened to glance at Miss Windham, and found her watching him with a small smile on her face. When she realized he'd seen her, the smile widened.

"Sorry," she said. "When Dad was trying to tell me that you were a robot, he asked me whether I'd ever seen you eat or drink."

Jarvis nodded. "As I said, Miss Windham, you can see that I am flesh and blood."

"Yeah," she agreed. "And you know, I think I'm actually a little disappointed. That would have had to be a very impressive robot. I would have sat down to take you apart and figure out how you worked."

"In that case, I'm very _glad _I'm not a robot, Miss Windham," said Jarvis.

Her expression suddenly sobered. "Call me Dido, Neddy," she said. "If we're going to die, I'd rather we do so on a first-name basis."

Stabbing terror shot through him again. He'd been trying not to dwell on the idea of what these people might do to him if they weren't going to give him back to Mr. Stark, because he knew there was only one possible answer and it horrified him._ He could die._ One well-placed bullet would be enough to shut down all the delicate processes that made this fragile body work, and there would be no reboot. He fought down the fear, wondering if Miss Windham could hear the sudden frantic thumping of his heart. "We're not going to die," he said, because he had to believe it.

"Yes, we are." She sighed heavily. "Huang can't let us go, not when we know he's up to something. We're witnesses." She met Jarvis' eyes for a moment, then quickly turned away. "For what it's worth, Neddy, I'm sorry. I had no idea it was anything this serious, and I didn't mean to get you involved in it."

Jarvis didn't know how to respond to that. The polite thing would be to tell Miss Windh... to tell _Dido _that it was all right, but that would be a lie. It wasn't all right, not when they were handcuffed to a pipe in a basement full of people with some nasty agenda. At the same time, however, he wasn't actually angry with her anymore. There seemed little point.

"Hey," she said suddenly. "You work for Stark – look at this."

Jarvis raised his head. One of the computer screens – the one that had previously been displaying text – was now showing what appeared to be footage of some sort of torpedo. A submarine fired a projectile which split into several units and impacted an underwater hillside. It looked awfully familiar.

"Huang gave me a little talk about his underwater mining," said Dido, "and he showed me some video that looked like that. He calls the thing_ Niu Wa_. Is that, or is that not, stolen Stark tech?"

"_Niu Wa_... the Bullfrog," mused Jarvis. "I can't tell you without seeing the inside of it, but it does look very much inspired by the Jericho missile." Mr. Stark had tried very hard to destroy that entire line and all the blueprints for it, but it was possible that a few had slipped through his fingers. A scaled-down version might be a very effective aid to mining: it could strip away an entire cliff side to get at the strata and ore beneath. Although the thrust mechanism would have to be redesigned before it could be used underwater...

"I thought so," said Dido. "Dad apparently accused him of stealing technology. Maybe he did." She shrugged, as if to say it didn't matter now. "I wonder why he calls it a Bullfrog."

The question was probably rhetorical, but Jarvis answered it anyway, because he happened to know and because answering rhetorical questions was probably the closest thing he had to a hobby. "It's a mythological reference," he said. "A Chinese legend states that the world sits on the back of a giant frog, and earthquakes occur when the frog stretches." Was that the mysterious 'experiment' – were they trying to cause an earthquake? Sufficient stress on a fault line could probably do that, but that still left the question of the eight-hour time delay. Where did that come in?

"Oh, my god," Dido whispered suddenly. "Neddy, I think I figured it out."

That was the third time she'd called him 'Neddy' and he was about to ask why, but before he could do so she'd grabbed him by the collar with her free hand and pulled him close to hear her. "Dad and Huang don't get along anymore. Like I said, Dad accused him of stealing technology and they had a pretty bitter fight about it. Huang kept telling me to get Dad down here to see something and I thought he just wanted an apology, but this... this is what he wants him to see! He's going to cause an earthquake!"

Her voice had risen a bit, and the people at the computers turned to look. She quickly resumed whispering.

"Why does he want to do that, though?" she asked. "If he wants revenge... even if Dad's in the city when it hits, there's no guarantee that he'd be hurt. Why not just hire a guy and have him shot? That's what I'd do."

"You sound as if you've given this some thought," Jarvis noted drily. "He might do it just to prove that he can, but the men in the car mentioned an 'experiment' that would occur at eight PM Hong Kong time, and that we would feel the results eight hours later. That doesn't sound like causing an earthquake."

Dido was startled. "You speak..." she began, then looked around a moment before dropping her voice even lower. "You speak Chinese?"

"I speak a number of languages," said Jarvis. Mr. Stark had programmed him to be able to translate over a hundred, including both Cantonese and Mandarin. "Unfortunately, they didn't say what this experiment was. But if their experiment is at four AM and nothing will happen here until noon, then they must be quite far away. An earthquake isn't likely. The tremors would have dampened out to nearly nothing but the time they could reach us here."

"Yeah," Dido nodded. "The worst we could get here is..." she paused. "_Oh_."

"What is it?" asked Jarvis.

She swallowed. "A tidal wave."


	15. Chapter 15: Ransom Drop

Co-operating with the proper authorities wasn't really Tony's style. His main experience of such, in both the pre- and post-Iron-Man portions of his life, was of people trying to force him to do things he did not want to do, or to _stop _doing something he _did _want. Whenever possible, he tried to let other people deal with whatever authorities were intruding into his world – but now that was no longer an option. It was just him, Windham, Huang, and Agent Wheeler.

Tony had to admit that Wheeler seemed to have her priorities straight, but for all she insisted they were hurrying it still seemed to take an awfully long time to finish preparations. She wanted all three men to wear listening devices, in order that the FBI could overhear and record anything the kidnappers might say to them. Then she had to coach them on what _they_ were allowed to say, as well as vetting their clothes and Tony's Land Rover. He could understand why all this might be important, but time was passing, with Jarvis' life in the balance.

_Jarvis' life_. Maybe it was just because he was nervous, but that phrase made Tony want to laugh out loud at the same time as his insides felt like the world had turned inside-out. He still hadn't quite come to terms with the implications of the argument earlier, but he had a good idea that once he got Jarvis back, the two of them were going to be walking on eggshells around each other for _weeks _while they sorted this out. That wouldn't be any fun, but it would help that they'd have his tactile hologram project to work on. At least they'd be busy.

He smiled to himself, remembering Pepper's face at the moment she'd understood what he was hoping to do. If Tony knew her, she'd probably gone through the notes he'd given her and then sat right down to start ordering the materials he would need. It would be nice, he thought, if he and Jarvis could finish the projector before Dr. Strange came back. The idea of the two of them physically building something together was surprisingly appealing. For the first time, Tony actually hoped that Dr. Strange wouldn't show, at least for a few more days.

Knowing that Pepper was off somewhere taking care of things the way she always did – and that Steve and however many 'friends' he managed to gather would be looking out for him during the ransom drop – went a long way towards making Tony feel as if this emergency would work out all right. Certainly it was a lot more encouraging than the presence of Huang.

Wheeler had told Huang to talk to the kidnappers as little as possible, and he'd been sitting at the other end of the room reading a magazine while Tony and Windham got their instructions. Tony was still sure he'd met Huang before, in a considerably more personal way than just a conference or trade show, but he just couldn't put a finger on where. It couldn't have been a _good _meeting, because Tony found himself unwilling to trust the man. There was just something _off_ about him.

It was getting on for seven o'clock – inexcusably late, when they only had until midnight – when Agent Wheeler finally gave them the okay to go. The weather had soured around six, and the three men climbed into the Land Rover under darkening skies, with a chilly wind blowing in from the Pacific. Tony had insisted that if Windham got to choose the witness, _he _would provide the vehicle, and Windham had finally agreed, on the condition that _he _was allowed to _drive _it. He got in the front seat, and Tony tossed him the keys before climbing in the back next to Huang.

"Don't scratch the paint," Tony said. Windham did not reply.

The first rain began to speckle the windshield as they pulled out of the police station parking lot. Tony spotted Steve standing on a corner about a block away, as if waiting for a bus – he waved as they passed, just a pal wishing a pal good luck, and Tony waved back. On the way out of town, Tony kept his eyes open, looking for more familiar faces, but didn't see any. It didn't worry him: some of them were quite good at blending into crowds. That was a skill Tony had never mastered, although quite honestly, he'd never tried.

Soon they were on the Angeles Crest Highway, on their way up into the hills to the drop point. Tony watched the rainy world pass by the window, and thought that if he'd gotten nothing else out of this mess, he'd at least learned his lesson about keeping backups. He wondered what Dr. Strange was doing right now – and whether Strange knew what _Tony _was doing. Was the sorcerer sitting on a cloud somewhere, watching the whole thing and having a good laugh?

That reminded Tony of something. "Hey, Windham," he said.

"Stark," grunted Windham.

Tony licked his lips. "What the hell made you think Jarvis slept with your daughter? I mean, did she _say _he did?"

"No," said Windham, eyes on the wet road. "A father can tell these things, Stark."

"Uh-huh," said Tony. "It's just that I have a hard time imagining that Jarvis would..." he paused a moment, and decided not to finish that statement. He hoped that hadn't been what Dr. Strange had in mind when he'd said Jarvis needed a learning experience – although it would definitely qualify as one.

_Now _Windham glanced back. "Is he gay?"

"You know," Tony said, "I actually have no idea."

It was about eight thirty when they reached the rendezvous point – a bend in the hillside road with a sign proclaiming it to be a scenic lookout. The weather made it hard to tell how accurate this statement might be. It was raining in earnest now, and lightning was flickering over the mountains to the east. Tony decided to consider that a good thing: it might mean that help was indeed nearby if he ended up needing it. Windham pulled over, and the three men settled down under the sound of rain beating on metal to wait.

They waited. Ten minutes went by, then twenty. Windham leaned on the steering wheel, watching drops run down the windshield. Huang sat fidgeting and checking his watch repeatedly. Tony slouched in his seat, resisting the urge to do the same. The arc reactor glowed softly through his shirt in the darkness. They waited some more.

Eventually, Tony couldn't take the quiet any longer. "Huang?" he said.

"Yes, Mr. Stark?" Huang checked his watch again.

"As long as we're here," Tony said, "haven't you and I met somewhere before?"

Huang raised his head, surprised. "Yes, as a matter of fact, we have. It was in Taiwan. I hadn't thought you'd taken any notice of me."

"I probably didn't," Tony admitted, "otherwise I wouldn't have had to ask." He thought for a moment. "When was I in Taiwan?" He knew he'd been there more than once, but the only occasion he had clear memories of was when he'd dropped by as Iron Man to destroy a weapons cache that belonged to an anti-communist group calling themselves the Tian Ming.

"Somebody's coming," said Windham.

Tony sat up straight and turned in his seat to look. Somewhere behind them, a light source was growing brighter and brighter, until it finally became headlights on a low, dark vehicle. This came to a stop directly behind the Land Rover, but the lights stayed on. In the glare, it was impossible to tell what kind of car it was, or how many people were in it.

"Well." Tony unbuckled his seat belt. "This is it."

"That it is," Windham agreed.

"On three," Tony decided. "One... two... three!"

The three men opened the doors of the Land Rover and stepped out into the rainy twilight.

Huang stayed next to the Land Rover as Agent Wheeler had instructed him, while Tony and Windham slowly approached the other car, squinting in the bright light. They were halfway there when the headlights abruptly went out.

The sudden darkness left Tony nearly blind. His first reaction was to widen his stance and get ready to defend himself, but he was not attacked. Instead, he realized that the listening device threaded inside his clothing was warm, and getting warmer. As it became _hot_, he was forced to actually open his shirt and yank it out before it burned him – and when he looked back, he found Windham and Huang with their jackets open, having had to do the same. A moment later, the lights on the Land Rover flickered and died, leaving them now in near-complete darkness.

"What the hell was _that_?" Windham demanded.

"EMP," said Tony. "Probably to overload the bugs." The other vehicle had shut off so that its own electrical systems wouldn't take the same damage. That was clever...

"You are correct, Mr. Stark," said Huang.

The headlights of the other car came back on. Tony's eyes had begun to adjust to the dark, so this just blinded him all over again. After a moment of blinking, he was able to make out that two men had gotten out of the other vehicle – and that they were carrying guns. As they approached Tony and Windham from the front, Huang stepped up from behind. One of the goons tossed him a pair of handcuffs, which he proceeded to put on Windham.

"Huang!" Windham said. "What are you doing?"

"You said it yourself, Mr. Windham," Huang replied. "I am taking revenge." He clicked the cuffs closed, then was given another and came to put them on Tony. Tony decided not to resist, not yet. One thing he'd learned about bad guys was that they loved talking about themselves. Let Huang monologue, and they might just learn something.

Sure enough, he continued: "I'm well aware that you didn't send your daughter to reconcile with me, Mr. Windham. You sent her to find more evidence of your accusations."

"Actually..." Windham began, but Huang interrupted him again.

"And I can't risk you _finding_ that evidence," he said. "Your technology has been very valuable to the Tian Ming. At least, those parts of your technology that Mr. Stark did not destroy when he paid me a visit in Taiwan."

_Then _Tony remembered: a man who'd run up to him at the Taiwanese weapons cache, screaming threats in half a dozen languages. There'd been a lot of machinery at the camp, some of it covered in tents or tarps and some just sitting out. At the time, Tony hadn't cared what was what, because he was pretty sure that a group dedicated to bringing down the government of the world's third biggest economy shouldn't have _any _of it. He hadn't looked twice at the man who'd approached him, either, other than to notice that he was extremely tall. He'd just pushed him over and gone about his business.

That had been months ago. Now Huang was clean, shaved, and dressed in a suit and tie instead of hiking gear. It was probably no wonder that Tony hadn't recognized him – but he kicked himself all the same.

"Where are you taking us?" demanded Windham, as the two goons blindfolded their captives and pushed them into the black car. "What's with all the cloak and dagger nonsense? If it's revenge you want, why not just shoot us right here?"

"Don't give him ideas, Balthazar," said Tony.

"Because I didn't come here to kill you," Huang replied. "I came here to finalize a weapons demonstration for my friends in Taiwan. You two are merely going to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Mr. Windham, Mr. Stark, it's been a pleasure."

The door thumped shut. The engine started. The car backed up, turned around, and began heading back down the Angeles Crest towards the city.

A lot of people would have considered this an appropriate time to start panicking, but not Tony. If he hadn't panicked over finding Jarvis naked in the driveway, he certainly wasn't going to panic over a little thing like being kidnapped by terrorists. He'd been there and done that, and had a very flashy chest-mounted souvenir. If they were going back to Los Angeles, it would take them at least half an hour to get there, so that was time in which Tony could _think_.

So Huang was planning to demonstrate a weapon for the Tian Ming... on US soil? How was he planning to get away with that? And he was putting Tony and Windham in the way of that test, because apparently that wouldn't look suspicious. Two powerful and wealthy businessmen dying in somebody's weapons demonstration wouldn't look suspicious. Right.

What had Huang and his buddies done with Jarvis and Miss Windham? The thought that they might have already killed them made Tony clench his fists and jaw and anger, not only at Huang but at Dr. Strange, too. Was that supposed to be Jarvis' _learning experience_? Sunburn, argument, and death? Then again, if Huang had some sort of magical plan to keep anyone from realizing that he'd murdered Tony and Windham, he'd hardly want to leave other bodies that could be traced to him. More likely he had Jarvis and Dido stashed away someplace where they, too, could be in the way of this demonstration.

Hopefully it would be the same place he was taking Tony and Windham. That would simplify matters.

"Well, Stark?" growled Windham.

"Huh?" asked Tony, turning towards the voice despite the fact that both men were blindfolded. "Well, what?"

"You're the superhero. Don't you have something in your bat utility belt to get us out of this?" Windham's voice was thick with sarcasm.

Tony could play, too. "Sorry," he said. "Agent Wheeler specifically forbid the bat utility belt. Anyway, you gotta _earn _the bat utility belt. This guy had a crummy monologue."

"A crummy _what_?" asked Windham.

"Monologue. The 'No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You To Die' speech. Huang's gets a three, and that's being generous. No detail. He's supposed to tell us what his evil plan _is _so we can escape and thwart it." If only these things were so simple.

Windham didn't sound impressed. "This is all a joke to you, isn't it, Stark?"

"You're the one who brought up bat utility belts," Tony reminded him.

"You're the one who claims to have taken personal responsibility for world peace!" Windham shot back, "and yet all you do is crack wise about it!"

"What's your blood pressure like, Windham?" asked Tony.

"Both of you," said a voice from the front seat, "be quiet." There was an ominous clicking sound.

Tony rolled his eyes, although there wasn't much point to doing so behind the blindfold. "Is that an actual gun?" he asked, "or do you have a foley guy under the seat?"

"_Be quiet_," the voice repeated.

They drove on in silence, and Tony got back to his thinking – but try as he might, he couldn't come up with anything that made sense of what Huang had said. What kind of weapon was he demonstrating that he thought he could get away with this? Tony was confident that he'd be able to do something about the weapon, whatever it was – just as long as he didn't have to find out the hard way. He was going to have to keep alert.

And if it did turn out that Jarvis was already dead? Tony felt something harden inside him: if that were the case, then he was going to _find _Huang and he would _take the bastard apart piece by piece_. Jarvis was supposed to be learning something about being human – getting ignored for two days and then being summarily executed because he'd gotten in some psychopath's way was _not _a learning experience. Tony had spent the first half of this week treating Jarvis like an embarrassing inconvenience when he should have been taking the time to help him learn. The thought that he might not even get a chance to make up for it made him _furious_.

Where the hell was Steve? Hadn't he promised he would have Tony's back?

The car wound its way back down the road out of the hills, and eventually Tony could hear traffic again – they must be back in the city. He tried to keep an ear out for anything that might tell him exactly where they were, but that was a faint hope at best. All he could make out were generic sounds of cars and people moving around, and the occasional siren. When they finally arrived somewhere and shut off the car engine, there were people talking in Chinese and vehicle doors opening and closing. The two goons helped Tony and Windham out of the car and escorted them into a building, amidst more noise. It sounded as if people were moving furniture or equipment.

They were taken down some stairs, surrounded by more clatter and much repetition of a phrase that Tony guessed was Mandarin for "excuse me!" Then they were on a level floor again and Dido's voice exclaimed, "Dad!"

"Sweetie!" Windham said.

"Sir!" called Jarvis.

"Doctor Scott!" said Tony promptly.

There wasn't really a _silence_ – there were still too many people moving around and talking for that – but there was definitely a _pause_.

"Fuck you, Stark," said Windham.

"Good to see you, too, Sir," said Jarvis.

The handcuffs were unlocked and used to fix Tony's right hand to something, leaving his left free. That allowed him to pull off the blindfold and look around. They were in what looked like an old men's room or locker room in the basement of some building. He, Windham, Dido, and Jarvis were all handcuffed to an exposed pipe. In the rest of the room, men and women were cleaning up the last of their equipment and getting out.

"Right," said Tony, "who wants to bring me up to speed?"

"We're all going to die, thanks for asking," Dido said.

Tony nodded. "That's a start. Can you fill in the details?"

It was Jarvis who explained what they knew of Huang's plan: "Sir, I believe Mr. Huang has been developing a weaponized tsunami, under the cover of an undersea mining operation."

That was all Tony needed to hear. His eyes widened as the picture abruptly snapped into focus. "A tsunami! _That's _why he thinks he can get away with it!" Most people would simply assume it was a natural phenomenon. It would require some sort of underwater explosion to set it off, but explosives were necessary for mining, and... "even if somebody connects it with his mine, he can claim it was an accident." That was actually pretty impressive.

"I overheard two of his men discussing it in the car," said Jarvis. "The test will take place at four AM Pacific time, and the resulting wave will reach the California coastline at about noon."

"While we're chained up in this basement," Dido put in. "So we're either going to drown or else have the building fall down on top of us."

"Right," said Tony, "so it'll look like the kidnappers cleared out and left us here to die. What time is it?" He checked his watch. "Looks like ten-thirty. That doesn't give us a lot of time to work with. Let me think." _This _was a problem Tony could work with. He'd been in much worse messes: there wasn't even anybody guarding them here, and Steve and the gang were probably on their way. When they arrived, he was going to have some words for them about the delay.

"Sir," said Jarvis tentatively.

"Yeah?" asked Tony.

Jarvis swallowed. "Sir, I think I owe you an apology..."

"No, you don't," said Tony firmly. "It wasn't your fault."

"Sir," Jarvis sat again, but cut himself off with a yelp of pain as Dido suddenly kicked him.

"_Stop _calling him Sir!" she said. "What are you, his butler? I meant that much, you know. Quit your grovelling. Tony Stark doesn't deserve it!"

Jarvis clearly didn't know how to react to that, so Tony took over. "I mean it, too, Jarvis," he said. "You don't have to apologize. I deserved that. Having you around like this is kind of freaking me out, but that's not an excuse, and I'm gonna make it up to you," he promised. "I've got a project for us. It's a new hologram projector. I think I've worked out how to superimpose a shaped electric field. That'll make it seem solid, and it'll be fully interactive!" He saw Jarvis' expression change as he realized what Tony was planning to use it for, and couldn't help but smile. "Hopefully that'll keep me from mistaking you for lab equipment. What do you say, buddy?" He offered his free hand. "Friends again?"

"This is a good idea," said Dido. "We should all apologize."

Tony frowned at her. "All?"

"Yes!" She nodded emphatically. "I don't know about you guys, but I don't want to spend the last few hours of my life with people I'm mad at. I'll go first."

She took a deep breath. "Tony, I'm sorry about the way I acted when we were going out. I was manipulative and passive-aggressive. I should have done less whining and more thinking about whether the relationship was going anywhere, and maybe we wouldn't have hated each other so much at the end of it. And Dad," she turned to Balthazar, "I'm sorry I called you crazy. I really don't think you're well, and I want you to see a doctor, but I probably could be nicer about it. And Neddy... I already apologized to you, but i meant it, okay? I'm sorry you ended up here."

"Time out," said Tony. "Who's _Neddy_?" He looked at Jarvis for an explanation, but was unable to catch his eye, because at that moment Balthazar leaned into his way to put an arm around Dido's shoulders.

"It's all right, Sweetie," Windham said. "If we're apologizing, then I apologize for having you followed. I just don't want anything to happen to you. You're all I've got, you know!" This was actually surprisingly soft and heartfelt for Windham, and Tony was a little relieved when he ruined it a moment later by growling, "it's not as if it did a lick of good, anyway. Trust me, Dido, I'll make sure that detective never works again, not even flipping burgers! I'll see him begging in a cardboard box on..."

"_Dad_," said Dido.

"Right, sorry." Windham cleared his throat and looked awkwardly at Tony. "I guess I should apologize to you, too, Stark. I'm sorry I blamed you for this. I was jumping to conclusions. You too, uh, Ned." He nodded towards Jarvis. "I'm sorry for thinking you were a robot."

"That's quite all right, Mr. W... Balthazar," said Jarvis. "It's an understandable conclusion."

"Tony," Dido prompted. "Your turn."

"Me?" asked Tony. Not that he'd been a perfect angel to the Windham family, but this was ridiculous – they were wasting valuable time they could have been using to escape. "Right now?"

The look Dido gave him could have curdled milk.

"Oh, fine," she said. "Apology. Apology." What did he have to apologize for? Well, there _was _the obvious. "Okay, Dido, I'm sorry for ignoring you. I guess you were right, I do treat people like lab equipment sometimes. I've been worse about that this week than usual, actually. I'm working on it. Jarvis, again, I'm going to try to get better. And Balthazar..." he paused, then shook his head. "You know what? No. I'm not sorry. About anything. We're just gonna have to work with that."

Windham scowled, but then shrugged. "Fair enough."

"What about thanksgiving?" asked Jarvis.

Tony shut his eyes and conceded. "All right, yeah, except thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was all me. I'm sorry about thanksgiving."

That seemed to satisfy Dido, at least. She nodded and looked at Jarvis. "Neddy?"

"Why do you keep calling him _Neddy_?" Tony asked, before Jarvis could say anything.

"Miss... Dido said if we're going to die, we should do so on a first-name basis," Jarvis explained. "And you're the one who decided my given name was Edward."

Dido was confused. "Wait, it's not?"

"Yeah, but you're not a 'Neddy'," said Tony.

"Sir," said Jarvis, "I..." Then he stopped, bit his lip, and said, "Tony."

As far as Tony could remember, Jarvis had never used his first name before, and it sounded weird to hear it in that voice. But it was also a bit of a relief. If Jarvis were willing to call him _Tony_, then maybe their fight really was over. "Yeah?" he said.

"I think I _do _need to apologize," said Jarvis. "Both for our argument today, and for this." He twitched his right arm so that the handcuff jingled against the pipe. "It's my fault we're in this situation."

"How is this your fault?" Tony asked.

"Dr. Strange told me I would have to be where I was needed, and that would be where you were," said Jarvis. "But I wasn't with you this afternoon. I was with Dido."

"Uh-huh." Tony cocked his head. "If you don't mind my asking, uh, _why _were you with Dido? Did you two, uh..." He couldn't. He just couldn't say it. "Fondue?" he tried, for lack of a better euphemism.

"Oh, for crying out loud," muttered Dido.

"I met her by accident," said Jarvis. "But if I hadn't argued with you and then walked away, I wouldn't have been there, and you and I wouldn't be here now. So I apologize for that."

"If it helps," Dido put in, "I don't think it makes a hell of a lot of difference. If you two hadn't ended up here, you'd just be going about your business tomorrow not knowing what was coming. You'd probably end up dead anyway."

"But we _do _know what's coming," said Tony. "That means we still have a chance to do something about it – so Jarvis, don't apologize." He looked at his fellow prisoners. "Are we done with the love-in? Okay, great. Now, let's work on getting out of here so I can save the day. I'm a superhero. That's what I do."


	16. Chapter 16: The Daring Escape

People were supposed to look impressed when a superhero proclaimed that he was here to save them, but after a moment Tony realized he shouldn't have expected it of this lot. Balthazar and Dido had never thought terribly much of him – and Jarvis simply knew him far too well.

The first response he got to his announcement was Windham's derisive snort. "And what do you think you're going to do about it, Stark?" he asked. "Even if we can get out of this place, you've only got a few hours to stop these people, and you don't even know where they are. What if you can't find them? You can't evacuate Los Angeles in the time we've got. It would take days."

"Well, I'm definitely not going to be able to think of anything while you're spouting doom and gloom at me," said Tony. He held up a hand to forestall any angry reply. "As you just said, we can't do anything else until we're out of this basement, and we can't get out of this basement until we're out of these handcuffs, so let's take things in order." They needed a plan, but this was the sort of thing Tony knew how to make plans for. "Lucky for us, handcuffs are easy. We just need something we can use to lift the ratchet. Dido, you got any bobby pins?"

She shook her head. "I don't use them. They don't hold my hair."

It had been worth asking. "Well, does anybody have a wire or a safety pin or..." the answer suddenly came to him. "Dido! Give me your glasses!"

Dido took them off her face and looked at them critically. "They're plastic," she pointed out.

"But there should be a wire in the arms to make them hold their shape," said Tony. "We'll have to get the plastic off to get at it, but that's easy. We just need to warm it up." And if there were one thing Tony Stark had easy access to, no matter where he was or what he was doing, it was a heat source. "Balthazar, you're closest to me." He began unbuttoning his shirt to expose the arc reactor. "Since I've only got one free hand, I'll need you to help me get at the part of this thing that's hot."

Jarvis reached out. "I don't think that's a good idea," he protested. "Once you remove the arc reactor, you only have about ten minutes before you go into cardiac arrest."

"Don't worry about it," Tony replied, and then realized what he'd just done – he'd dismissed Jarvis' advice again. "Sorry," he added. "Look... this won't take ten minutes, okay? Can you trust me?"

Jarvis hesitated, then nodded. "Yes."

"Keep your hand _real _steady," Tony warned as he unscrewed the arc reactor. "This is delicate."

Windham's eyes widened as Tony eased the tiny machine out of its housing. "Good lord, Stark, I had no idea the thing was so _big_."

"Is that a compliment to my fortitude, or an insult to my ability to miniaturize?" asked Tony. Windham didn't give him an answer, which was just as well – Tony didn't want one. "Here we go," he said, leaning forward a bit to shorten the distance between them. "Balthazar, hold this and try not to let the wires touch the side of the socket."

Windham took hold of the reactor as if it were a bomb.

Tony glanced up at the other two. Dido was staring wide-eyed at the hole in his chest, and Jarvis was chewing on the side of his own thumbnail, clearly worried sick. Tony gave them a reassuring smile. "It's okay, guys," he said. "I do this all the time."

"Usually under rather more controlled conditions," Jarvis pointed out.

"We'll make do," said Tony.

With Windham holding the reactor, Tony carefully released part of the cover, exposing the coils of the plasma containment system. With the cooling ring removed, the wires were so hot they made the air above them shimmer. Being careful not to burn himself, Tony held one arm of Dido's glasses in the heat and silently counted to ten. That made the plastic soft enough to straighten out the hooked part. A few more seconds, and hopefully it would slide right off.

"Okay, Balthazar, keep holding the reactor steady. Dido," he held out the glasses, swallowing as he felt his heart beginning to beat arrhythmically. "You hold these by the hinge so they won't snap when I pull." She obeyed. Tony wrapped his hand in his shirt for protection from the hot plastic, but still hissed at the heat on his palm as he grabbed it and yanked it smoothly off the metal underneath.

As it pulled away, Dido's fingers began to slip. She grabbed to keep a hold on the glasses, and accidentally touched the metal. With a squeak of pain she reflexively let go, and the glasses clattered away across the tiles.

"Oh... damn it!" she exclaimed, sticking her singed fingers in her mouth. "Oh, god, I'm sorry!"

"Don't panic!" Tony ordered. He tried to toss the plastic aside, but it had partially melted into his shirt and now could not be separated from the fabric. He told himself he'd never liked that shirt anyway. "See if you can reach them. Balthazar, you help me put the reactor back together."

While they worked on that, Dido strained to reach where the glasses had fallen. She could _almost _touch them, but when her fingers brushed against the frame she accidentally pushed them a fraction of an inch further, beyond her reach.

"_Damn _it!" she said again.

"Let me try," said Jarvis. He had longer limbs, but he also had to reach rather awkwardly past Dido, putting the two of them into extremely close contact. She squeezed back against the walk to give him more room, but they still could have kissed if they'd wanted to. Tony couldn't help wondering whether they _did _want to... or whether they already had.

Unfortunately, Jarvis still couldn't quite reach them. He sat back up and thought for a moment, then pulled off his right shoe and sock and tried that instead. Tony couldn't watch – Jarvis still wasn't all that great with his _hands_, and even normal people could be clumsy trying to grab something with their feet. He could just picture their chance of escape slipping down a crack between the tiles...

"I have them!"

Tony snapped the reactor back into place, and raised his head to find Jarvis holding the glasses with a triumphant smile.

"Great work, buddy!" said Tony. "Pass 'em down!"

Tony took deep breaths to make his heartbeat normalize, while Jarvis passed the glasses to Dido, who gave them to Balthazar, who turned them over to Tony. He licked his fingers and touched the metal gingerly, making sure it was now cool enough to handle. Once he was satisfied that it was, he sat up and twisted around so he could see what he was doing as he inserted the pointed end of the wire into the handcuff ratchet.

"Have you ever done this before?" asked Dido.

"A couple of times," Tony replied nonchalantly. He had no problem if they wanted to believe he regularly made daring escapes in the process of saving the world.

Jarvis had to ruin the moment: "Mr. Stark has been in handcuffs on ten occasions. Six DUIs, a resisting arrest, two drunk and disorderlies, and astonishingly enough only one public indecency. Of course, those are just the incidents I am _aware _of."

Dido snorted with suppressed laughter.

"Jarvis," said Tony, "there is a time and a place for honesty, and that was not it."

"Sorry, Sir," Jarvis replied, with a smile that meant he wasn't sorry at all.

When the kidnappers had cuffed Tony's right hand to the pipe, they hadn't realized that he could work with his left just as easily. It took a minute of fumbling and one accidental self-stabbing, but eventually the handcuff opened and Tony was able to pull his hand free and stick his bleeding finger in his mouth. "One down, three to go!" he declared, and decided to free Jarvis first.

Wedging the ratchet open was a lot easier – and less painful – with both hands. It took him only seconds to get Jarvis out. "There you go," he said, pulling him to his feet. Jarvis held on to him for support for a moment, then tried to stand unaided and nearly fell down again. Tony had to grab him quickly. "Whoa! You okay?" He remembered what had happened at the beach. "Stand up too fast again?"

"I'm numb in my left foot!" said Jarvis, sounding very worried about it. He reached down to rub the appendage, and frowned in confusion. "No... I can feel it now, but it's... prickling."

"You've been sitting on it," Tony realized – and here was a chance to do what he _should _have been doing since Monday, and actually help Jarvis to understand the things he was experiencing. "It's okay, that's just what's called your foot falling asleep. Give it a minute to get the blood back into it, and you'll be fine." He patted Jarvis' shoulder. "Once you can walk, go see if the doors are locked, while I get Dido and Balthazar out."

"Yes, Sir." Jarvis sat down again and removed his other shoe and sock so he could try to massage the feeling back into his toes.

Tony paused for a moment, then made a decision. "Jarvis, you can keep calling me Tony if you want to."

This suggestion seemed to puzzle Jarvis. "If _I_ want to?"

"Yeah," said Tony. "It's up to you."

"May I think about it?" Jarvis asked uncertainly.

"Take your time," said Tony.

Dido and Balthazar were both staring as Jarvis got up and, hobbling slightly on the foot that was still half-asleep, went to check the doors. "What is _with _him?" asked Dido.

"It's kind of a story," said Tony. "Now's not a good time."

He opened the other two sets of handcuffs while Jarvis rattled the doors and then reported back. "It's no good, Sir. They've been barred from the outside."

"All right," said Tony, as he and Dido helped Balthazar up. "We've got step one over with. Now, let's work on step two."

Tony gave the doors an experimental push of his own and confirmed what Jarvis had just said: there were not locked, and in fact could not _be _locked because the mechanism had been removed when the basement was abandoned. They were, however, barred. Tony could open them about an inch – just far enough to see that Huang's departing cronies had put a crowbar through the handles on the other side. Crude, but effective. If they could get a hand or a tool through either the slit between the doors or the hole left where the lock had been taken out, they might be able to slide it out.

"Who's got small hands?" asked Tony. His certainly weren't going to fit through either opening, and neither were Balthazar's. "Dido," he said, "want to give it a try?"

Tony and Windham held the doors open as far as they could, and Dido tried to get her hand between them. Unfortunately, it wouldn't fit – try as she might, the base of her thumb was just a bit too thick. Next she tried the hole where the lock had been, but with no more success. Even with her thumb pressed tight against her palm, her knuckles wouldn't go through.

Tony scratched at his beard while he thought – he wished Pepper were here. She had dainty little hands... and then he remembered something he'd noticed a couple of days ago and then forgotten about. "Jarvis," he said. "Remember I told you that you kinda look like Pepper? Pepper's got small hands. You try."

Jarvis held up his hands and studied them doubtfully, but said, "yes, Sir." He took off his blazer and rolled up his shirt sleeves. Tony winced at the sight of yesterday's sunburn, still fresh and ferociously red, on Jarvis' arms – it was going to suck trying to shove _that _through a small space, but Jarvis himself didn't hesitate to try. After a moment, though, it became obvious that he wouldn't be able to do it, either. Jarvis had narrow palms and delicate fingers for a man, but they still weren't going to make it through.

"It was worth a try," said Tony. He did some more beard-scratching. "Everybody look around," he said. "Maybe there's something we can use as a tool. Dido, you see if the windows open." The windows were tiny and high up, but if just one person could wiggle through, he or she would be able to come back down and free the others. If it wasn't possible to open them, maybe they could break the glass...

"Sir?" said Jarvis.

Tony looked at him and found him studying his own hands again, prodding at his palm as if counting the bones.

"I believe," Jarvis said, "I may have an idea."

* * *

In trying to force his hand into the gap between the doors, Jarvis had been able to feel his skin rubbing between the wood outside and the bone within. It had reminded him of his unsettling realization earlier that day that inside this body were things like organs and veins and a skeleton. Had that really just been earlier today that he'd been thinking about that? It felt like weeks ago. Human time was a terribly subjective thing.

But it was the skeleton that was the problem now. He could see that his _wrist _was smaller than the hold for the lock – the thing making his _hand_ too wide was the way the metacarpal of his thumb was attached. If he could have rotated it just a little further into the palm, his whole hand would have slipped through with only minimal difficulty. His thumb was in the way, and logic dictated that if something were in the way, it must be moved.

Since, as he'd noted while eating his sandwich, he was apparently right-handed, Jarvis decided to use his left for this experiment. That way, even if he sustained irreparable damage it would be less of a long-term handicap. He braced the back of his hand against the wall and found the joint he wanted. Then he took a firm hold of it, and _pulled_.

"Jarvis," Mr. Stark began, "what the hell are you..."

There was a horrible juicy popping sensation, accompanied by a stab of pain worse than anything Jarvis had felt yet in this whole rather painful adventure. It sliced through his hand and washed over the rest of his body like an electric shock – his vision went white and for a moment he could feel nothing else. When sensation returned he found himself on his knees and panting, with bright spots swimming in front of his eyes. Beyond these, Dido Windham was standing over him, pale-faced and with her hands covering her mouth. Her father was half-cowering behind her, and Mr. Stark was simply staring open-mouthed in shock.

Jarvis swallowed a mouthful of sour fluid. He felt like he ought to say something. The only thing he could think of was, "that was significantly more painful than I anticipated."

"Yeah, I can tell by the way you hollered," said Mr. Stark, though Jarvis could not remember shouting. "What did you just..."

"I think I should be able to get my hand through now," Jarvis said. It wasn't exactly an attractive idea. Something in his head was screaming at him to put the bone back _now_, to curl up and weep, to do _anything _that would make the pain stop, but after taking the trouble of dislocating it, Jarvis had to make the effort. He held the loose thumb against his palm, gritting his teeth as the pain throbbed in his ears like a heartbeat, and slipped his hand through the lock hole.

The unfinished wood scraping his sunburn hurt. The pain in his thumb was _excruciating _in a way that made the dictionary definition of that word seemed woefully inadequate. But his hand fit through, just far enough for him to touch the crowbar with his index and middle fingers. By putting one finger on each side of the bar, he could push it along inch by painful inch. The process was desperately slow, and his head was starting to swim – he worried he'd lose consciousness before he got it finished. Some sort of hot liquid trickled down his forehead and into his left eye, where it stung fiercely. After that he kept his eyes closed. More drops of fluid slid down his neck and back, making him shiver.

Finally, he managed to move the bar far enough that gravity took over: it slid out and fell on the floor outside with a loud metallic clatter. Jarvis let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, and carefully withdrew his hand. Suddenly, he felt utterly unable to hold his body up. He sat down heavy and limp on the hard, cold tile floor and slumped against the wall, eyes closed.

"Holy _shit_," he heard Dido Windham said.

Holy shit, indeed. If he'd had any idea how much it was going to hurt, he doubted he'd have been able to even get as far as popping the thumb joint out of place – which reminded him that he'd better summon up the energy to sit up and put it _back_. The longer it was dislocated, the more the surrounding tissues would become inflamed and swollen, and the harder it would be to avoid permanent damage.

Mr. Stark knelt down next to him, eyes still wide. "Let me help you with that," he said, taking the hand gently.

"I know how to replace it," Jarvis assured him, his voice high and thin with pain. He had, through the workshop robots, helped Mr. Stark to set or relocate bones on more than one occasion – Iron Man was a dangerous job and even with the protection of the suit, Mr. Stark often needed medical care after a mission. If he'd known it felt like _this_, he would have been rather more gentle.

"Well, I know how to do a lot of things," Mr. Stark said, "but I still let you help with them." He found the base of the metacarpal, and there was another flash of pain and nasty _pop _as it snapped back onto the trapezium – and then, suddenly, the pain was gone.

Jarvis stared at it in surprise. "It doesn't hurt anymore," he said. That didn't seem right.

"It will tomorrow," Mr. Stark promised him. "Try not to move it too much." He grabbed Jarvis' other arm and helped him upright.

"Holy _shit_," Dido repeated. "I can't believe he just did that."

"Neither can I," said Mr. Stark.

And that was when Jarvis started giggling.

It was not voluntary – all of a sudden he simply felt an irresistible need to _laugh_. This was the first time he'd done that, wasn't it? That seemed a little odd. Laughter was something deeply and essentially human, at least as much so as anthropomorphizing or lying to oneself – and those were things Jarvis had caught himself doing within his first twenty-four hours in this body. He hadn't found anything particularly funny yet... maybe because most of the time he'd been too worried about his own situation to take an interest in jokes.

Nothing was funny now, either, and yet he _couldn't stop_. He'd been light-headed after Mr. Stark put his thumb back, and when he'd stood, that sensation had suddenly transformed itself into euphoria as he realized he might well have just saved all their lives. If he had failed in either of the two tasks he'd just performed, retrieving Dido's glasses or opening the door, all four of them might have been doomed to die down here... and he'd been able to save them because he'd been _where Stark is_. Had he, after all, fulfilled what Dr. Strange had asked of him? Could it really have been that simple? The idea seemed absurd.

Maybe this really _was _funny after all. Maybe that was why Jarvis laughed and _laughed _until his abdominal muscles hurt.

"Jarvis! Snap out of it!" Mr. Stark snapped his fingers in front of Jarvis' face. "Hey! Look at me!"

Jarvis obeyed, and then finally managed to calm himself when he saw Mr. Stark's terrified expression. Mr. Stark was clearly afraid that Jarvis had gone mad. It took a minute or two of disciplined breathing and intermittent giggles, but he eventually got himself under control.

"I'm all right, Sir," he panted finally.

"Good," said Mr. Stark with a nod. "We're getting out of here, we'll find a phone, and we'll get you to a doctor. Hang on to me."

The doors opened easily down. It was just a flight of steps up into what seemed to be an abandoned fitness centre. The only light was the cold blue glow of Mr. Stark's arc reactor, but by that they found their way up to a side door and out into a parking lot. Jarvis had to lean on Mr. Stark the whole way. He doubted he could have remained upright on his own.

Outside, rain was falling, and it suddenly seemed to Jarvis that water falling out of the sky was a rather strange thing. He understood all the physics of evaporation and precipitation behind it. He knew how the water cycle worked. And yet for some reason, the fact that these processes actually manifested themselves as _water _literally_ falling out of the sky _was the oddest thing.

The sounds of traffic and sirens could be heard not far away. "He'll have put us somewhere near the coast or a river," Mr. Stark decided, "where he'd be sure the water would reach us. Let's find a pay phone or somebody with a cell we can borrow." He shifted his shoulders, trying to find a better way to bear Jarvis' added weight. "It's okay," he said. "We're almost out of this."

The chilly, damp air outside seemed to help clear Jarvis' head. He felt a little less like he was about to fall over as they wound their way between factories and warehouses, some of them still in use and some not. He could stand up a little straighter and be a bit less of a burden, although he didn't yet trust himself to walk unaided. All he really wanted right now was a place to lie down and sleep. Funny, that – two days ago, the thought of sleep had been frightening.

"Are you feeling better?" Dido asked him anxiously.

"I'll be all right, Miss Windham," Jarvis assured her.

"That was the most badass thing I've ever seen anybody do while wearing a three-piece suit," she said. "I wouldn't have thought you had it in you."

Mr. Stark told her, "you need to watch more movies."

"Neddy didn't have a stuntman," she replied.

Suddenly there was a blaze of red and blue lights. That made Jarvis' head hurt, and he shut his eyes – but opened them again a moment later, when he heard the familiar voice of Captain Rogers calling Mr. Stark's name.


	17. Chapter 17: Before the Storm

As Tony had expected, they were in an industrial district not far from the river. Between that and the building's disrepair, he could see how Huang would have been pretty sure his prisoners wouldn't survive a tsunami. Even if they somehow escaped drowning or being crushed by the disintegrating building, there would be so many emergencies in the wake of the disaster that looking for four kidnap victims would hardly top anybody's priority list. Tony had to hand him that much: unlike many a would-be supervillain, Huang had thought his Evil Plan through.

Except, of course, for the part where he'd decided to mess with Tony Stark.

And Jarvis. Tony was still stunned by what Jarvis had done. He was stunned that Jarvis had been _able _to do it – Tony couldn't really imagine bringing himself to purposefully dislocate a joint, although he probably would be able to do it if the situation were dire enough. But 'dire enough' would have had to have been a hell of a lot more dire than just a closed door. What had Jarvis been _thinking_?

But as well as stunned, Tony was also rather proud and a little moved. It was _his _Jarvis who'd done that, and he'd probably learned it from Tony himself – heaven knew Jarvis had helped Tony with enough injuries to have a good working knowledge of the human skeleton. The look on his face when he'd yanked on his thumb had been that of a man who knew exactly what he was doing... and he'd done it _for Tony_. It was incredible to think that even after they'd fought earlier, Jarvis was still willing and able to do such a thing – and Tony hadn't even asked him to.

Tony owed him another apology. Tony probably owed him several _hundred_ apologies. If Tony had just risen to the occasion and tried to _help _Jarvis – as he was starting to suspect Dr. Strange had wanted him to do – rather than treating the poor man like a piece of talkative luggage, they never would have had that argument. If a learning experience had been what Dr. Strange had in mind, Tony felt like he'd been slapped in the face by one.

He had an awful feeling that when Strange finally did show up and get things back to normal, it was going to be very, very awkward for a while. Once this whole kidnap-and-tsunami business was taken care of, they would have to get to work on that hologram projector. If JARVIS had an avatar that Tony would have to talk to like a person, it would hopefully make the process of finding a new status quo easier on both of them.

When they left the abandoned gym, Tony had heard the sirens nearby and decided that was the direction they should go. It would at the very least get them closer to a main road, and if they happened to meet the emergency vehicles themselves, that would be a shortcut to the help they needed.

It turned out to be better than a shortcut. They turned a corner to find an administrative building of some sort that was lit up fit for the Superbowl, making the rain glitter around it. It was surrounded by people and vehicles, including police cars, an ambulance, two very official-looking FBI cars, and even a SWAT van. Once eyes eyes adjusted to the light, however, Tony realized that on the edge of this crowd there were also four familiar faces. Steve was huddled under an umbrella, pointing out something on a map to Agent Wheeler, while Clint Barton and Natasha Romanoff watched from nearby. Tony raised his free hand and waved as he and Jarvis stepped into the lit area, and Steve looked up in surprise.

"Tony?" he asked.

"Where the hell did you get _your_ information from?" Tony demanded of him. "We were about four blocks back that way!"

For a moment – it seemed like quite a long one, although in reality it was probably less than a second – there was no reaction but surprised faces and no sound but the pattering rain. Then everybody began moving at once. Suddenly Tony and the others were the centre of attention, surrounded and being offered help from all sides. Three paramedics elbowed their way through the crowd, and since Jarvis was the one who obviously needed help walking, they immediately focused on him.

"He's in shock," said Tony, following close behind as the paramedics helped Jarvis to the ambulance. That was the only explanation he could come up with for Jarvis' sudden creepy laughing fit. "He needs one of those blankets. That's what you do for people in shock, right? You've got special blankets." He was pretty sure he'd seen that on a TV show at some point.

"We'll look after him, Mr. Stark," one of the paramedics assured him. They got Jarvis to sit down and directed him to put his head between his knees – and Tony felt rather reassured when one of them did, in fact, drape a blanket over him while another put a pressure cuff on his arm.

"I am not in shock, Sir," said Jarvis hazily. "Medical shock is a circulatory condition characterized by a sudden drop in blood pressure. My symptoms are those of an Acute Stress Reaction."

"One-ten over seventy-five," the woman reading the pressure cuff announced.

"Within the normal range," Jarvis confirmed.

Tony wasn't in the mood to be told he'd been told so. "He's dislocated his thumb," he told the paramedics. "I helped him put it back, but you should probably look at it. His insurance is through Stark Industries. Just bill it to the HR department." He would have to warn Pepper to expect that...

"Mr. Stark." Another paramedic put his hands on Tony's shoulders. "We'll look after your friend. Sit down, and let's take a look at you, too."

Soon Tony, Dido, Windham, and Jarvis were all sitting inside the ambulance with thin blue blankets draped around their shoulders, getting their own checkups. One of the FBI agents had brought coffee and donuts from an all-night Krispy Kreme, and Steve, Clint, and Natasha were hovering outside, staying out of the rain in the lee of the vehicle.

"Glad you guys could make it," said Tony. "Can anybody here loan me a cell phone?"

Clint grinned. "Glad you're okay," he said. "Fury's _exact _words when Steve called were 'is this your idea of a _vacation_, Captain?"

Tony could just imagine. "Come on, a cell phone!" he said. "This is the twenty-first century, don't tell me you left it at home, you wouldn't make it to the end of the block. Anybody?"

"I've got one." A paramedic passed it to him.

"Thanks," said Tony. He looked at it, then frowned. "Jarvis, what's Pepper's number?"

Jarvis gave it to him, and he was able to call her and assure her that he was all right. Agent Wheeler tried a couple of times to interrupt, but Tony wouldn't let her – this phone call was the most important thing in the world right now, and everything else could wait.

"Tony," Pepper said, and he could hear the relief in her trembling voice, "I don't know how much longer I can take you almost dying every other week."

"At least I'm down to every _other _week," he replied. "Listen, Pep... I need you to get out of the city. Head inland. I've got a cabin up on Big Bear Lake. JARVIS will let you... no, you'll need the keys. They're in the safe in your office. Go there, hole up, stay safe."

"Why?" she asked. "What's going to happen?"

"Hopefully nothing," said Tony, "but if anything does I don't want you in the way of it. _I'm _the only one allowed to almost die every second week."

"Every second _week_," she repeated. "You're not allowed to almost die twice in the same _day_!"

"Well, after this I'll take a month off almost dying," Tony said. "Just get out of Los Angeles and away from the coast, please, will you? And go now. 'First thing in the morning' will be too late."

"Okay," said Pepper.

"I'll see you in a couple of days," Tony promised her. He gave the phone back to its owner, and then since they looked curious, he introduced his companion to Clint and Natasha. "You guys have met Jarvis," he said.

The paramedics had wrapped Jarvis' injured hand up in an elastic bandage to keep it from swelling too badly, and had suggested some stretches he could do with it to ensure he regained a full range of motion. He was now studying a range of donuts, and eventually selected a plain chocolate – perhaps because it was the only one that wasn't sticky. "A pleasure to see you again, Agent Barton, Agent Romanoff," he said.

"Yeah, Steve told us about you," said Clint.

"It's nice to meet you in person, Jarvis," Natasha said. Neither of them looked particularly troubled by he situation, but then, they'd been warned. And having worked for SHIELD for years, they'd doubtless seen weirder stuff than this.

Jarvis smiled. "In person," he murmured. It wasn't a reply, or even a question. It was more as if he were thinking aloud.

"So how _did _you guys end up over here?" asked Tony.

Agent Wheeler had stepped away for a few minutes to talk to the police while Tony finished his phone call. She returned just in time to hear this question, and immediately answered it. "This is where the detective told us he met with Mr. Huang."

"Detective? What detective?" asked Tony.

"Oh, god," Dido said through a mouthful of donut. She chewed and swallowed. "Let me guess: the detective Dad hired to follow me around and make sure I was safe."

Wheeler nodded. "Apparently Mr. Huang met him here and paid him to take the night off, hinting that he and Miss Windham were planning a romantic encounter they didn't want her father knowing about. He didn't find out that Miss Windham was missing until he saw it on the ten o'clock news, and then he contacted the police immediately. We naturally hoped this would be where you were being held."

Of course, Tony thought. The police and the FBI assumed that criminals were stupid, because most of them were. But Huang wasn't a career criminal; he was a man who had figured out how to weaponize a natural disaster. He would know better than to bring anyone near where he'd _actually _be keeping his prisoners.

Wheeler climbed into the ambulance and sat down in the middle of the group. "Now," she said, "time to get everybody up to speed. What happened to you?"

"What happened to us? What happened to _them_?" He gestured towards Steve, Clint, and Natasha, still standing outside. "Where were you guys while we were getting kidnapped?"

"Clint and I were watching at the rendezvous point," said Natasha. "We were worried they'd kill you immediately if we moved too soon, so we radioed back to Steve about the car switch and then once you were gone we went in to take down Huang and the two who stayed with him."

The mental picture of Natasha – all five feet and three inches of her – tackling the towering Huang made Tony grin. Poor bastard probably never knew what hit him. He looked at Steve for the next part of the story.

"I was waiting for the car," said Steve, "but I missed them. I decided they must have taken a different route back into the city, so I got in touch with Agent Wheeler."

"Wait, so it's just you three?" asked Tony. "Where are the others?"

"Well, we couldn't get in touch with Bruce," said Clint.

"If he doesn't want to be found, we really shouldn't impose on him," Natasha added.

Tony could understand that – Bruce Banner was a man who needed his space. He looked up as lightning flickered overhead. "What about Thor?"

"Thor couldn't come," Steve said. "He sent his apologies, but apparently it's his parents' anniversary."

"One of the round ones," Clint put in, "like twenty-five hundred or something. He had to make an appearance at the banquet."

Tony nodded – it seemed the crummy weather was nothing but that after all. Balthazar Windham wasn't the only one who needed to stop jumping to conclusions.

"I met up with Agent Wheeler shortly after she heard from the detective," said Steve, "so we called the others and had everybody meet here."

"Barton and Romanoff brought us Huang and two others, but they're not talking," Wheeler said. "They won't even say 'no comment'. Huang hasn't even asked for a lawyer, and the other two are at least pretending not to speak any English."

This news prompted Tony to bring his mind back to the problem at hand. He stuffed the rest of his donut in his mouth and checked his watch – it was nearly midnight. In four hours, the fate of hundreds of thousands of people would be sealed. "Get them away from the coast," he told Agent Wheeler. "Take them up in the mountains, or even out of the state. Then they'll talk. Right now they figure we're all going to be dead or have bigger problems in a few hours, so they don't see the point in jeopardizing their demonstration."

"What demonstration?" asked Wheeler.

"They are attempting to create a targeted tsunami," said Jarvis.

"They're going to set off some kind of underwater explosion around four AM," Tony clarified, "and they're expecting it to cause a tidal wave in Los Angeles."

"They're mostly using stuff they stole from Stark," Dido added.

Tony hadn't heard that yet. "What, they are?"

"I believe Miss Windham is right, Sir," Jarvis said. "We watched them viewing some footage that seemed to show technology stolen or copied from Stark Industries."

"Huang's always been a thief!" Windham huffed. "He's been stealing designs from _me _for years – and when I complain about it, people call me paranoid!" He glared at his daughter, making it very clear who 'people' were.

Wheeler looked for a moment like she thought at least part of this must be a joke, but then she must have realized they were serious. She pulled out a small tape recorder and set it down on the floor. "Start at the beginning," she ordered, "but make it quick. If you're right, we don't have much time."

* * *

Since coming out of his laughing fit, Jarvis had felt oddly disconnected from the world around him, almost as if he were back to watching it through camera lenses, unable to directly interact. That was one of the symptoms, along with sweating and elevated heart rate, that had allowed him to diagnose his own acute stress reaction. Mr. Stark had suffered from the condition more than once. Medical literature described the state as 'dissociation' or 'daze' and said it usually passed in a few hours. Jarvis was not worried by it.

Neither were the paramedics, who didn't consider his disorientation or his hand injury serious enough to warrant an actual trip to the hospital. Once they'd finished their work and Agent Wheeler had finished her debriefing, the entire group had been driven to a Motel Six in Arcadia. The location was under FBI surveillance and far enough from the coast to be out of the reach of a tidal wave.

"From here it's up to the diplomats," said Agent Wheeler. "I'll let you know as soon as I have any news, but you should all try to sleep. Lord knows, I won't be getting any tonight."

"Let us know if you need us," said Captain Rogers.

Jarvis knew it was customary to undress before going to sleep, and he would have liked to remove his clothing anyway – he was starting to get used to it, but every so often he would become aware of it again and then be unable to ignore the feel of it on his skin until something distracted him. The others all took turns changing in the bathroom, but Jarvis only got as far as sitting down on the edge of the bed before deciding he wouldn't bother. He lay down, and was awake long enough to notice that a bed with pillow and blankets was much more comfortable than the sofa in the hotel, which hadn't been long enough to stretch out on. But he was barely even able to finish that thought before he slipped into the darkness.

And dreams. Dreaming was, as Jarvis had already noted, a thoroughly unsettling experience. It was one on the growing list of things his brain did without him being aware of the process that produced it, and he still wasn't comfortable with that. But the content of the dreams themselves, insofar as he was able to remember them upon waking, was also distressing, and on this night they were particularly vivid and troubling.

Two of them were repetitions of the dreams he could vaguely recall from his first night of human sleep: one in which he told Miss Windham who he really was and she laughed in his face, and one in which thorny branches, like giant rose bushes, were overgrowing Mr. Stark's house and tearing it apart. The two motifs were connected now, one immediately following on the other as if they were a sequence of related events. He and Miss Windham searched the house for a place where the thorns could not get to them, but found none.

Then suddenly Jarvis was alone. The thorns were gone, and the house was empty and silent. Nevertheless, he was hurrying through it, looking for a way out, and he couldn't find one. In places where he knew there should have been doors, doors he'd once been able to open with a thought, there were now nothing but blank walls. Jarvis ran through room after room, increasingly desperate. He didn't know where Mr. Stark was, but he knew he had to get to him, and the only thing that was standing in his way was the ridiculous fact that he could not find an exit! Eventually he was reduced to ineffectually beating with both fists on the wall where the front door should have been, shouting for someone to let him out. It accomplished nothing, but he kept it up until his hands were bleeding.

Then he suddenly stopped. His hands were bloodied... but where was the bandage the paramedics had put on his injured thumb. "This is not real," he realized, speaking the thought aloud. "If I wake up, the doors will be there."

His eyes flew open, and he was back in the hotel room bed.

Breathing heavily, Jarvis raised his head a little and looked around. Mr. Stark was asleep beside him, snoring slightly. It was no longer raining, and the red glowing numbers on the bedside clock said _03:48_. He wondered whether the diplomats Agent Wheeler had mentioned had managed to prevent Huang's people from setting off the tsunami. Wouldn't she have called if she had? Or did her promise to pass on any news only apply to _bad _news? In twelve minutes – no, the clock had just changed to _03:49_, make that eleven – it would all be decided one way or the other.

Jarvis knew in an academic sort of way that destroying a city full of unsuspecting people in order to demonstrate a weapon was a terrible thing to do, but other than his own fear of death, he didn't have any strong emotional response to the idea. He wondered if that were because he wasn't really human, or because he simply didn't have any experience of all the lives that would be destroyed if Huang's demonstration weren't cancelled. He _knew _Mr. Stark and Miss Potts, and to a lesser extent the Avengers, Miss Windham, and her father, and the thought of anyone in that group coming to harm did upset him. The other three point eight million people in the greater Los Angeles area were strangers to him, and the knowledge that they were in danger was more abstract.

Considered in that light, perhaps it was Jarvis' very _lack _of reaction that represented human thinking creeping into his programming again. Human priorities were sharply skewed by what they were involved with personally – Mr. Stark himself was an excellent example. When carrying out missions as Iron Man, he was almost always far more destructive when the people he was fighting were using weapons his own company had built. Maybe it was a similar bias that had allowed Jarvis to find time during their escape to be relieved that Mr. Stark was not angry at him over their argument. In fact, as they'd worked out their plan of escape in that basement, he'd heard in Mr. Stark's voice the very thing Miss Windham had tried to convince him had never been there, that element of interest that had initially made Miss Windham herself such a satisfying conversational partner. Mr. Stark had been talking to _Jarvis_, not to himself.

That thought made Jarvis feel warm in a deeper sort of way than a blanket or a cup of coffee did, and he would have followed it a little further if he hadn't suddenly realized that he'd raised a hand to his right shoulder and was scratching it through his shirt. His sunburn itched. Captain Rogers had told him not to scratch, and he'd assumed that would be a simple instruction to obey – after all, scratching was a voluntary action – and yet here he'd been doing it without even being aware. That was even more disturbing than the mysterious process of dreaming: how did this body keep managing to do things without Jarvis' conscious input?

This distressed him enough to push him to full wakefulness, and he sat up and rubbed at his face, trying to relieve the tight feeling in the skin under his eyes. Now that he moved his left hand, the thumb had begun to hurt again, though not with the same fierce hot pain as when the joint had been out. Now it was more of warm, dull ache. When he tried to move the digit, it was unexpectedly stiff, and the bandage seemed to have tightened. The tissues must be inflamed. That was hardly surprising.

When Mr. Stark woke in the middle of the night, he would splash some cold water on his face and then either have a drink of alcohol or, if he were particularly restless, go down to the workshop and tinker with something until he could no longer keep his eyes open. Much of the original Iron Man suit had been built during such midnight sessions, and they'd become more frequent since the incident in New York. Jarvis didn't have anything to work on and was still determined not to touch any alcohol, but he decided to see if the cold water might help. He eased himself out of bed carefully, so as not to disturb Mr. Stark, and crept into the bathroom.

Cupping water in his hands was another thing that proved to be more difficult than humans always made it look – most of it kept trickling out between Jarvis' fingers before he could get it to his face. He eventually managed to hang onto a few tablespoonsful, and the shock of the cold water against his skin made him feel more awake and aware. He inspected his thumb and found that the tissue was visibly swollen around the edges of the bandage. Then he removed his shirt to take a look at the shoulder he'd been scratching. What he saw was a bit of a shock: the outermost layer of skin had begun flaking away. Miss Windham had warned him of that, hadn't she? _That's going to peel like a banana_, she'd said.

He caught one such flake between his fingers and it peeled away painlessly – a scrap of thin, silvery dead tissue that was at once totally innocuous and yet completely repulsive. Jarvis shook it off his finger and wiped his hand on his trousers. Then he stopped short as he suddenly caught his own eye in the mirror.

The previous morning when he'd been knotting his tie, Jarvis had looked in the mirror and all of a sudden had really _understood _that he was looking at _himself_. Jarvis had never seen himself – he'd never had, nor had he ever needed, a self-image. He hadn't identified himself as being Mr. Stark's house, or as being the server, or any other physical thing... but now he was looking in a mirror and seeing himself. The first time he'd seen that reflection, in the rearview mirror of the Land Rover, he'd been shocked by it, unable to comprehend it. Yesterday morning he'd studied it a little more closely, familiarizing himself with it and trying to adjust to the idea: _that's me_. It had felt terribly strange.

It seemed a bit less so now. He still felt something inside him twist as he placed his hand on the glass and watched each finger meet its reflection, but it was a little easier to process. _That's me_. The image in the mirror – that was the body he was trapped in, but paradoxically, that trap was self-mobile and could take him places he could never have gone before. The yawning abyss of freedom open in front of him was still terrifying, especially when he'd come so close to toppling into it just that afternoon. Before settling on taking a cab, he'd seriously considered simply walking away into the city. If he'd gotten lost there, he might never have seen anything familiar again.

Somebody knocked on the hotel room door.

Jarvis opened the bathroom door in time to see Agent Romanoff sit up and turn the bedside lamp on. The clocks now said_ 04:04_. In the other bed, Mr. Stark sat up, blinking in the light.

"Is that Wheeler?" he asked sleepily.

"I expect so," said Jarvis. Since he was already on his feet, and probably the most awake of anyone in the room, he answered. It wasn't Wheeler, but it was one of her fellow agents – Wheeler herself was knocking on the next door over, the room where Captain Rogers and the Windham family were sleeping.

"Dr. Jarvis?" the man asked. "I'm Agent Salzmann. We need everybody to get their stuff and head out to the cars now. We've got a helicopter waiting to take you to Las Vegas."

Mr. Stark staggered up and stood on tiptoe to look over Jarvis' peeling shoulder. "What happened?" he asked.

Agent Salzmann looked very tired. "I'm afraid we have some bad news."


	18. Chapter 18: Making Waves

_**Author's Note:**__ There's kind of an Easter Egg in this chapter. You don't win anything if you find it, but you might get a laugh._

* * *

The first thing Tony thought of when he heard the words 'bad news' was, "where's Pepper?"

"Pepper?" asked Agent Salzmann.

"Miss Potts," Jarvis explained.

"I sent her up to Big Bear Lake," said Tony. "Did she get out?"

"Oh!" Agent Salzmann said. "She was still at her apartment when we got in touch with her. We've sent somebody to pick her up. She's going to meet us at the helipad."

For half a second Tony was angry: he'd told Pepper to leave _right away_ and that had been four hours ago! He knew she could get ready in a hurry when she needed to, so why was she still in town? The feeling didn't linger, though. He could talk to her about it when this emergency was over, and in the mean time she'd be perfectly safe in Las Vegas, four hundred miles from the coast. Staying near the coast was going to be _Tony's _job.

A few yards away, Agent Wheeler was explaining the situation to Steve and the Windhams. She only got as far as the word 'helicopter' before Steve interrupted her.

"We can't leave," he protested. "If something's going to happen, we'll be needed here."

"Took the words right out of my mouth," Tony agreed. "This is no time for _us _of all people to be running away and hiding!" Behind him, Clint and Natasha both voiced their agreement.

Wheeler didn't look impressed. "Captain America can stay," she decided, "along with Hawkeye and the Black Widow." Her use of the code names was pointed and deliberate, making it very clear that they were to be present in their capacity as superheroes. "But Mr. Stark, Dr. Jarvis, and the Windhams have to come with us. Until Huang or one of his followers cracks, everything we know about their plans comes through you four. We need you."

"That's just too damn bad," said Tony. He'd done more than enough screwing up and shirking his responsibilities for one week – it was going to stop. He wasn't sure yet what he could really do without the Iron Man suit, but there had to be something. "Jarvis and the Windhams can tell you anything you need to know. I'm staying."

He should have known better. "I won't be leaving either," said Jarvis. He addressed Tony: "I was told to be where you are, and that's where I belong in any event. Besides which, Miss Potts would never forgive me if I allowed you to come to any harm..." he hesitated a moment in indecision, and then finished, "Tony."

Tony had to grin. The name still sounded weird coming from Jarvis, but he thought he could get used to it. "Good to know _somebody's _got his priorities straight around here," he said.

"We'll stay, too," Dido said.

Tony's grin evaporated. "_You_?"

"Yes," she said firmly. "If you guys are going to be working on this here, you'll need us. Dad and I are the other half of the puzzle. Huang's been stealing technology from us, too. You need a complete picture of what he's got at his disposal. I've seen recent footage, and Dad probably has a list somewhere of everything he thinks Huang took." She looked at her father. "Right, Dad?"

"Fuck that," Balthazar replied. "Where's the helicopter?"

Tony decided to ignore Balthazar, but conceded that Dido might be helpful somehow. If nothing else, he vaguely remembered that she knew how to fly a plane: if worst came to worst, they might be glad for that. "New plan," he told Wheeler. "You can set up your HQ at Stark Industries. We'll have everything you need there, and anything that's missing, I'm sure Pepper can figure out how to get. We'll work this." If anyone could figure out how to stop a tidal wave in its tracks, two thirds of the Avengers were probably a good stark.

Wheeler, however, remained unmoved. "If you won't come with me, Mr. Stark, I will be forced to arrest all four of you."

"That sounds like fun," said Clint. "Let's let her try."

At some point during this conversation, Natasha had returned to the motel room – now she re-emerged, holding out her phone. "Agent Wheeler," she said, "Director Fury of SHIELD wants to speak with you."

This was clearly not something Wheeler had expected to hear. She reached to take the phone, and held it to her ear cautiously, as if it might burn her if she got it too close. "Hello?" she asked.

There was a short pause.

"Yes, Sir," said Wheeler.

Another pause. Tony looked at Natasha and said, "footie pajamas? Really? What happened to all those silk negligees?" Where, he wondered, did one even _buy _a flannel onesie big enough for a grown woman?

"Sir?" Wheeler asked the phone.

Pause. Natasha rolled her eyes. "Those were for your benefit, Stark, not mine," she said. "When it's up to me, I prefer to be warm."

Wheeler was starting to look really and truly scared. "But Sir," she said to the phone, "my instructions were..."

Tony could just barely hear the distant buzz of Fury's voice on the line, as SHIELD's director delivered his _own _instructions for dealing with the situation. It sounded as if he were living up to his name.

"Yes, Sir," said Wheeler, defeated. "Immediately." She gave the phone back to Natasha and scowled. "Very well, then, Mr. Stark. Let's go get set up in your building."

"I knew you'd see reason," said Tony with a nod. "Give us five minutes to get dressed." Everybody was in pajamas, underwear, or motel bathrobes, and none of that was exactly attire to save the world in.

"Hey!" Windham protested, as everybody started to head back into the rooms. "What about us? We still want to leave!"

"_You _still want to leave," corrected Dido. "I'm staying."

"You will do nothing of the sort, young lady," said Balthazar, shaking a finger in her face. "I'm not leaving you here to get washed away!"

Dido grabbed the finger and bared her teeth at him. "Thirty-five, Dad! I'm_ thirty-five_! What are you going to do, ground me?"

So much for all those heartfelt apologies, Tony thought.

Jarvis stepped between the arguing pair. "Mr. Windham," he said, "Tony and his colleagues will look after your daughter. She'll hardly be in any danger in the company of four superheroes."

Maybe in a bid to regain her deflated authority, Wheeler put her own two cents in. "You can go or you can stay," she said, "but make up your mind, because we don't have time for this and I'm still authorized to arrest _you_."

Windham threw up his hands. "Oh, fine! Have it your own way!" he snapped, then spun around and poked Tony in the arc reactor. "You let _anything _happen to her, Stark, and I'll sue you for every penny and your fancy armour besides!"

"I'll put you on the waiting list," Tony told him.

Windham stormed back into the motel room to get dressed. Dido followed, but only after taking a moment to smile at Jarvis and say, "thanks, Neddy." Steve, Clint, and Natasha were already in the process of changing, and Tony figured he and Jarvis had better try to catch up.

"You're really just gonna let her call you 'Neddy'?" he asked Jarvis as they headed indoors.

"She seems to derive some sort of comfort from it," Jarvis replied. He picked up his vest and tie, which he'd dropped next to the bed, and caught his shirt when Natasha tossed it to him from the bathroom. "Thank you, Agent Romanoff," he said, then added, to Tony, "I think Dido is honestly sorry for getting me involved, and is trying to make herself feel better about it by behaving as if we are friends."

Tony grabbed his jeans and stepped into them. "If you say so," he said. "_Neddy_."

"I'd like to remind you that I know all your fraternity nicknames, Tony," Jarvis said.

"Dirty pool, Jarvis," said Tony, grinning.

It turned out that Clint and Natasha had come prepared: both of them reappeared in their costumes rather than the street clothes they'd been wearing earlier, and they'd also brought Steve his costume and shield. Tony felt rather out-of-place sitting in an FBI van in civvies alongside three obvious superheroes. He took what comfort he could in the presence of Dido – back in her red power suit – and Jarvis – in his wrinkled shirt and trousers, with his tie un-tied and his vest un-buttoned. Tony wondered where that coffee ring on his left sleeve had come from, and made a note to find him another pair of shoes.

Wheeler called the people who were meeting Pepper to let them know about the change of plans, then began briefing the group on what had happened in China.

"Unsurprisingly," she said, "the Chinese government is disavowing all knowledge – and since it seems Huang had connections not just to the Tian Ming but to multiple terror and anti-communist groups throughout East Asia, they might well be telling the truth. Whatever the case," she sighed, "nobody wanted an international incident, so the Ministry of State Security put together a rain on the Ao Guang mining complex."

"I'm guessing that didn't go too well," said Steve.

Wheeler's expression was really the only answer anybody needed. "Huang's second-in-command, a Miss Peng... well, nobody's ever going to know for sure what she was thinking because she was shot dead during the raid," Wheeler said. "But as far as we can figure, she believed she had to use the weapon or lose it, so she used it. Seismographs detected the trigger blasts at three thirty-nine this morning. There were a series of fourteen, evenly spaced. They set it off early. We've got some people working on a computer model to tell us exactly when the wave is likely to reach the California coast, but it'll probably be there before noon."

"Then we need ideas _now_," said Tony. He wished Bruce were here. They needed all the big brains they could get for this one.

"Well, you have to evacuate the city, don't you?" asked Dido. "I mean, these guys may be superheroes, but they're not King Cnut."

This reference was lost on Tony, and he was a little relieved to see that Wheeler, Steve, and Clint all looked like they hadn't gotten it, either. Clint was the one who asked, "who's King Cnut?"

"He was a Danish ruler who conquered England in 1015," said Jarvis. "Legend has it he once stood on a beach and ordered the tide not to come in."

Steve raised his head. "Actually," he said. "Why not?"

"What do you mean, _why not_?" asked Wheeler, looking almost offended.

Tony had already caught on. "Thor!" he exclaimed. "If he can't do it personally, he's probably got some godly friend or other who can just stand on the beach and proclaim _Calmeth Thy Tits, O Ocean_! Problem solved!"

"The Norse gods of the sea were Njord and his wife Skadi," Jarvis put in.

Dido pointed at Jarvis. "Remind me never, ever to play _Trivial Pursuit_ with him."

"Thor. I'm on it," said Clint. He was already dialling his phone.

Agent Wheeler was staring at them as if they'd all just turned green in front of her. "You're just going to call up a god of the sea _on your cell phone_?"

"Asgard has excellent reception," Tony assured her. The reasons why had never made any sense to him, but the fact was undeniable.

"It's ringing," Clint confirmed. They waited while the tone sounded three times, then seven, and finally nine before going to voicemail. Clint left a short message, then shook his head and hung up, and everybody sagged in disappointment. Tony reflected that if Thor had been partying it up god-style for his parents' anniversary, he'd probably be in no shape to help them much right now anyway – nor would any friends he might have with ocean-related powers.

Thor would be apologetic later that he'd missed an opportunity to help, but that didn't do them any good right now. "Okay," said Steve, "so much for that. Does anybody have any other ideas?"

"We're in the wrong universe. We need Aquaman," said Tony. "There's gotta be a way to do this. How do you stop a wave?"

"By setting up an opposing wave form," Jarvis said.

For a moment Tony thought this was just a bit of sass – if the situation had been a problem on a physics test, that would have been the obvious solution. Then he said up straight and said, "son of a _bitch_."

Jarvis was startled. "I'm sorry... Tony," he said, still speaking the name with a certain amount of hesitation.

"No, no, no!" said Tony quickly. "Don't apologize, Jarvis, you're a genius! I could kiss you! I won't, because that would be weird," he added, "but yes, of course, that's exactly what we'll do. We'll set up an opposing wave form and cancel it out!"

"What does that mean?" asked Wheeler.

"Didn't you ever take physics?" Tony asked her. Who exactly was the FBI hiring these days? "When two waves overlap, they add together. If their peaks and troughs line up, like this," he traced out a pair of imaginary waves in the air, "they become one really big wave. That's what Huang's people were doing with their fourteen trigger blasts. But if the peaks of one are at the troughs of the other, they both vanish." His mind raced, putting together what they'd need to know in order to do this. "We can use the seismograph data to calculate where and when to set off our own opposing wave form. You think you can do that, Jarvis?"

Jarvis nodded. "I may need some... electronic assistance," he said, "but the computers available at Stark Industries ought to be more than adequate."

Steve took over. "All right," he said, "we have a plan, then. Tony and Jarvis can work out how to do that, while the rest of us will help to evacuate as many people from the waterfront communities as possible. We don't want to take chances."

"Wheeler," said Tony, "call the Air Force. Get in touch with Colonel James Rhodes – he's stationed at Edwards Air Force Base outside Lancaster. Tell him Tony needs a few favours."

"What if he asks what kind of favours?" Wheeler wanted to know.

"Tell him the kind that blow up real good," Tony replied. He cracked his knuckles: this wasn't a problem for superheroes after all. This was a problem for _science_.

He got a bit of a shock when the van pulled up in the Stark Industries parking lot – Pepper was there waiting for them beside her car, fully dressed and looking as if she had no plans to go _anywhere_, let alone Las Vegas. Tony hurried up to her. "Pep," he said, "why are you still here?"

"Because you are," she replied. "Tony, what's going on? Nobody will tell me."

"You're supposed to be on your way to Las Vegas!" he objected.

"So are you," Pepper said. "Agent Wheeler told me on the phone that you were staying and setting up a headquarters here, so I said I wanted to help."

Tony turned to look back at Wheeler, who was getting out of the van. "Don't look at _me_," the FBI agent sighed. "Nobody else is listening to me this morning, so why should I expect her to?"

"Now for the last time,' said Pepper, "what's _happening_?"

"I'll explain on the way upstairs," Tony decided. Pepper would be able to help. "We're gonna need our seismic data, all the computing power we can get, strong coffee, and I wouldn't mind seeing a change of clothes if somebody can arrange it. Also, Jarvis left his shoes somewhere."

Pepper nodded, and Tony saw her eyes flick past him to Jarvis, being helped out of the van by Natasha. He'd figured out sitting down, but was still awkward getting in and out of vehicles. "Dr. Strange picked an awful time to leave you with no computer," Pepper sighed.

Tony put his hands on her shoulders. "Dr. Strange picked a _great _time to give me a guy who can think on his feet," he said. If Jarvis hadn't been here, Tony probably would have eventually come up with the idea on his own, but... no, wait. He wouldn't have. Because if Jarvis hadn't been here, Tony would never have known this was happening. Dido and her father would still be locked up in that basement while a tidal wave headed for Los Angeles and nobody suspected anything but a mining accident.

Had Dr. Strange known all this was going to happen? And if he had... wouldn't it have been easier just to _say _something about it?

As they took the elevator up to her office, Tony gave Pepper a quick rundown of recent events. She was aghast at the threat of the tidal wave, but being Pepper, she immediately started doing what she could to handle it. She began making phone calls, rousing people early from bed with the promise of overtime pay, and with her usual efficiency she quickly arranged for everything Tony had asked for. He wanted to grab her and give her the classic Hollywood dip-and-kiss, but decided to wait until the emergency was over. Pepper had once told him that she doubted he could have tied his shoes without her – Tony reflected that he probably wouldn't have been able to _find _the shoes in the first place.

"You must be exhausted," he said, when she put down the phone and sat down at her desk. "Do you want to find someplace to sleep while we work on this?"

"Oh, no," said Pepper, shaking her head emphatically. "I won't be able to sleep until this is over. Although when it is... is that old offer of a week in Venice still good?"

"I'd prefer somewhere with less ocean," said Tony. "How about Lake Louise? When this is over, I'll take everybody to Lake Louise, my treat. We'll sit in the hot tub, we'll make s'mores in the fireplace, we'll teach Steve to ski, and you and I can sneak off and find places to be alone, okay?"

"Sounds good," said Pepper. "Thanks for _warning _me that you're bringing Steve this time."

They got to work. Agent Wheeler coordinated security for the building while Tony and Jarvis set up two big folding tables in the middle of the office. Pepper loaded up the relevant seismic data, and from somewhere or other she also dug out a wall-sized topographical map of the Pacific Ocean Floor. They spread this out on the tables, weighing down the corners with stacks of books to keep it from rolling up. Then Dido pulled the lid off a red sharpie, and drew a rough circle somewhere southwest of Kiribati.

"Huang was never too specific when he was telling me about it," she said, "but the Ao Guang mining complex is somewhere in here. When the guy arrives with me laptop, I'll show you the sales pitch he gave me. Maybe you'll see something in there that'll help you narrow it down."

"We'll take a look," Tony agreed. "In case that doesn't work out – Jarvis, do you think you can find the location from the seismic data?"

"I'll need the exact coordinates of the seismographs in order to triangulate," said Jarvis. He had seating himself at Pepper's laptop and logged onto the company server. Tony wondered whose password he'd used, and then wondered if he'd even needed one. His typing was improving by leaps and bounds as he got more practice.

Agent Wheeler had been on the phone. Now she disconnected and rejoined the others at the table. "I've contacted Colonel Rhodes," she said. "He's on his way."

"Awesome," said Tony. "I'll get the coordinates of those seismographs."

It was amazing how a little unnatural disaster could bring everybody together, Tony thought wryly as he marked their map with little x's to represent the seismographs. In the past few days he'd fought with all of these people: Pepper had been mad at him over repeatedly failing to show for the Disney thing, Dido hated him on principle, he and Jarvis had their argument, and Agent Wheeler had recently threatened to arrest him – but here they all were, working together like a well-oiled tsunami-stopping machine. They'd probably all be angry at each other again twelve hours from now.

Dido's laptop arrived and they gathered around to look at Huang's presentation. It was long on graphs and bullet lists, but short on useful information. There were a few photographs of facilities and some footage of people working underwater – Tony was going to have a word with his legal department about the 'Deepsuits' they were wearing – but these had been carefully chosen so as not to give away specific locations. Nobody would have noticed while watching it as a business presentation. Tony had to admit once again that whatever Huang was trying to accomplish, he'd certainly put some thought into it.

"Sorry, Dido," he said. "It looks like Jarvis is gonna have to figure it out."

"I think I already have," said Jarvis. "I just wanted to see if Dido's presentation contained any additional information. He looked at the map. "May I have some pins and a length of string, please?"

Pepper found them for him. He pushed the pins into the location of each seismograph, then used the string and a pen to draw arcs representing the blasts' distance from each. Theses all intersected, at a point right on the edge of the circle Dido had drawn in red.

"Good work," said Tony, clapping Jarvis on the shoulder. He couldn't remember if he'd said 'good job' or even 'thank you' when Jarvis had fixed the server yesterday, but suspected he hadn't. When he thought about it, Tony really didn't praise Jarvis very often. He would say 'good job' to Dummy and Butterfingers, which were technically extensions of JARVIS, but such sentiments had rarely come into his conversations with the AI itself. Tony tended to treat the robots as if they were separate entities with doglike personalities of their own. Maybe he'd done a lot more anthropomorphizing of his machines than he'd ever admitted... although apparently still not quite enough.


	19. Chapter 19: Anticlimax

Now that they knew where and approximately how strong the explosion had been, Jarvis and Tony got to work on modelling the wave that would result and figuring out exactly how to counter it. They sat on opposite sides of Pepper's desk: Tony scrawled calculations across pages and pages of foolscap, and Jarvis took these and translated them into computer code, occasionally adding small annotations or corrections in tiny block capitals, as neat as copperplate print. This was somewhat fascinating to Tony: _Jarvis' handwriting_ was another of the weirder concepts that this situation had produced.

Pepper had coffee brought up, which Tony and Jarvis both accepted – the latter added several packets of sugar to his. For the most part they worked in silence, but there was no hostility now, at least not so far as Tony could detect. He was willing to admit that his hostility radar was probably not well-tuned, but all he felt when he caught Jarvis' eye was a quiet, firm rapport. The nearest thing he could have likened it to was those moments in the heat of battle when the two of them had to think of unison – only this was less loud and had fewer aliens. It made Tony look forward again to working on the new projector. Maybe they could even do that this afternoon... but probably not. They were all going to be dead on their feet by this afternoon. Maybe tomorrow.

Dido didn't have much to do now, so she paced and stared at the paintings on the walls, and looked over people's shoulders to see what they were working on. She nosed in to flip through a few pages of Tony's notes, then glanced across at Jarvis and said, "I wouldn't have thought you'd be the type who liked Guns N Roses."

Tony raised his head. "What?"

"I'm sorry?" Jarvis asked.

"You were singing under your breath," Dido said.

"Was I?" Jarvis frowned and hummed a couple of bars, then said, "_Carry on my Wayward Son_ is by Kansas, not Guns N Roses."

"He gets it from me," said Tony. "We listen to music while we work together." Was that what had prompted Jarvis to start singing to himself – because this was a situation he would have expected to be playing music in? "That's what we need in here!" Tony decided. "Some music! Let's see what Pepper's got in her playlist." He turned the laptop around and brought up iTunes.

"That's an awful lot of code," said Dido, looking at the window Jarvis had been working with. "I hope you haven't made any mistakes."

"Not likely," Jarvis told her. "Most of these algorithms already existed as part of our seismic prediction project. I'm just adapting them."

Dido looked around at the scattered notes. Nothing on them, Tony knew, looked much like computer code. "From _memory_?" she asked.

Pepper stood up to provide a distraction. "Dido," she said, "I just found them... when the man came to try to sell me _Odalisque in Garden with Poppies_, I managed to sneak a few photos." She held out her tablet.

"You did?" Dido left Tony and Jarvis and went to look. "Okay, now I'm pretty sure the painting I saw was smaller than that. You couldn't see the fountain over here," she pointed, "or the post on the gazebo."

The women stepped aside to talk about art, and Tony downloaded some _actual _Guns N Roses for him and Jarvis to listen to while they finished their analysis. By the time Rhodey arrived, they were nearly done. The program Jarvis had put together worked with three sets of variables: time, location, and the force of the explosion that would be needed. Given a number for any one of them, the computer could generate a curve for the other two. The results weren't particularly reassuring: it looked like they were rapidly running out of time. If they couldn't set something off by about nine AM, their blast would have to fall dangerously close to the San Andreas fault. Preventing a tsunami wouldn't be much to brag about if they set off an earthquake instead.

When Rhodey arrived, Tony went to meet him in the lobby. His first words to his friend were, "not a moment too soon!"

"Tony!" Rhodey greeted him with a fist bump. "You look like you've had a hell of a week."

"I _have _had a hell of a week," Tony agreed. "My house is offline, my ex-girlfriend is in town, there's a tidal wave headed straight for us, and I think Jarvis got laid."

Rhodey came to what was probably the most sensible conclusion. "A computer virus?" he said. "Is that what happened?"

"No, I was being literal," said Tony. "I'll explain on the way up. We don't have a lot of time."

"So what else is new?" asked Rhodey.

The situation had gotten substantially more complicated than it had been when Tony explained it to Happy the previous afternoon. He did his best. When Pepper first heard about Jarvis she'd been dismissive; Steve had been curious, Fury annoyed, and Happy skeptical. Rhodey's reaction was harder to gauge. Years in the military and years of putting up with Tony had given him ample opportunity to perfect his poker face.

The elevator doors opened, and Tony led his friend back to Pepper's office, where he took a moment to make sure Rhodey knew who everybody was. "Agent Wheeler I think you talked to on the phone," he said. "I don't know if she's _got _a first name..."

"It's Patricia," said Wheeler. "Don't call me by it."

Tony made a note. "And I can't recall whether you met Dido," he went on.

"Oh, we met," said Dido. "At your birthday party, actually – I'm not surprised you don't remember. Nice to see you again, Colonel."

"Thank you, Miss Windham," Rhodey replied, and then approached the man sitting at Pepper's desk. "You must be Jarvis." He extended a hand.

Jarvis accepted it. "Always a pleasure, Colonel Rhodes."

"Huh," was all Rhodey said. He gave Tony a look that meant he'd want to hear more about this when the emergency was over – but for now, the tidal wave was allowed to take precedence.

By this time, the map they'd spread out on the table was thoroughly drawn on, not to mention scattered with pages of notes, empty coffee cups both paper and ceramic, and crumbs from the box of cookies that had been brought in with the coffee. Dido started to gather these up, but Jarvis stopped her.

"I had our seismology project files backed up on the company server," he explained, "and I think for this demonstration our holographic map will be easier to work with." He dimmed the lights in the room and the projector flickered to life, drawing a wireframe map of the ocean bottom in the air above the table. The location of the Ao Guang mining complex popped up in red, as did the seismographs that had provided their data, and glowing green indicated major population centres.

"The shape of the sea floor and effects of the prevailing currents suggest that the wave will arrive between between 12:12 and 12:17 this afternoon," Jarvis explained, as the shape of the wave's path lit up in brighter blue ripples. "Our window of opportunity is shrinking rapidly, but I've found a way to buy us an extra half hour." Three yellow points appeared, indicating places on the continental margin offshore. "Barring unforeseen circumstances, a set of smaller explosions at these sites, in a timed sequence, should neutralize the wave without over-stressing the fault line."

Rhodey nodded. "I don't know a lot about seismology," he said, "but I trust that you guys know what you're doing. The nearest carrier is the USS _Van Buren_. Fury's been in touch with the captain, and they're waiting for instructions."

"I can send them the data as soon as I have their internet protocol address," said Jarvis.

Tony was a little surprised. "That's it?" he asked. "We just send them the graphs and we're done?"

"Normally in an operation like this, we'd want you guys to join us on board as consultants," Rhodey said, "but it'd take at least forty-five minutes just to get you there, so the easiest way to save time is to have you supervise by teleconference instead."

That _would _save time – and time was a precious resource right now – but that didn't mean Tony was happy with it. He was used to taking personal charge of things, and as soon as he heard that most of the practical stuff would be out of his hands, he immediately thought of half a dozen things that might go wrong. If he'd had the Iron Man suit he could have just gotten the coordinates of the_ Van Buren_ and hopped on over, data and all. Tony spent a moment wishing really hard that Dr. Strange would suddenly come back – but then he changed his mind. That would have ramifications he didn't want to deal with at the moment. Better just to make do.

"Well, at least we can all clean up," he sighed. After being kidnapped in the rain, sitting for hours in a filthy basement, going to bed without taking a shower, and then working through the night, it probably wasn't much fun to be in the room with him. Everybody needed to wash up and eat, and Tony and Jarvis both needed to shave – Jarvis hadn't shaved since he'd arrived on Monday morning, and while his hair was fair enough that it didn't show much, he was getting stubbly. "When are they expecting us?"

"Any time you can set up," Rhodey replied. "Fury made a big point about getting things done fast."

"Got it." Tony turned to Pepper. "Think you can get the teleconference set up while the rest of us go make ourselves presentable? We can't call the Air Force looking like a bunch of unwashed hippies."

"I had changes of clothes for everybody brought in already," Pepper replied, "I just didn't want to interrupt you while you were working. They're in a suitcase by the door," she pointed.

"What would I do without you?" asked Tony.

She shook her head. "And you wonder why I didn't leave when you told me to."

There were showers at Stark Industries, for people who had to go in and out of the clean labs. They weren't the most spacious or comfortable in the world, and the soaps and shampoos on hand were rather industrial, but Tony could deal. His capacity for putting up with a lack of luxuries had always surprised people, even before Afghanistan.

"Ladies first," he told Dido. "Try not to use up _all _the hot water."

While she showered, Jarvis sat in an armchair in the hallway with his arms folded and his eyes shut, apparently dozing. Tony decided that while he had a moment, he ought to have that talk with Rhodey. He found his friend back in Pepper's office, finishing up a phone call to the captain of the _Van Buren_.

Once Rhodey hung up, Tony pulled him aside. "Okay," he said, "I know you've got questions. Let me have 'em."

"Not so much _questions_," said Rhodey. "I wasn't sure I believed you at first but now that I've heard him talk, yeah, I'm convinced. I just... every so often I just realize how _weird _your life is, Tony. I don't know if I could handle something like that."

"I haven't been handling it as well as I thought I was, myself," Tony admitted, wincing.

Rhodey shook his head. "I mean, he's just... walking around like he's a real person."

"I know," said Tony. He took a deep breath. This was probably a bad time, but he needed to talk to _somebody _about this, and it couldn't be Pepper – he'd treated _her _like an accessory for most of the time he'd known her, too. "The worst part is, I'm starting to think he may have been a 'real person' for a while now, and I just never noticed."

Rhodey didn't answer. When Tony looked up, he found that for once the poker face had failed – Rhodey looked just as astonished by this idea as Tony himself had been when it first hit him.

"Come on, Rhodey," said Tony. "You've always been willing to call me on my shit. You don't have to tiptoe around this one. Dido says I treat people like lab equipment, so it shouldn't surprise anybody that I never realized when my lab equipment became a person."

"If it helps, I never thought of him as anything but a machine, either," Rhodey offered. "I remember Dido saying that. I was the one who told her that she should tell you to your face."

"You did?" asked Tony. If so, she'd never taken his advice. Tony had only heard the accusation second-hand, through Jarvis. "When was that?"

"Just before she left you," said Rhodey. "She was trying to get me into bed. She thought it'd piss you off."

Tony's eyebrows rose. "_Did _you?" he asked.

"Hell, no."

"Okay," said Tony. That was a bit of a relief, even if at this remove he wouldn't have been particularly angry about it anymore. He hesitated a moment, then decided it was time to spit out the _other _thing that was bugging them. "I think she might've slept with Jarvis, and when I asked, neither of them ever explicitly denied it."

Rhodey had no idea how to react to that – which it was hard to blame him for, since Tony didn't either. He finally managed, "and that bothers you."

"Yeah, it bothers me," said Tony. "If you think about it, he's technically only three days old!"

That wasn't really it, though. The real reason it bugged him was... well, it was exactly what Jarvis himself had said on Tuesday morning: Tony was _jealous_. Except he wasn't jealous because Dido was paying attention to Jarvis – Tony no longer cared who Dido Windham spent her time with. He was jealous because _Jarvis _was paying attention to _Dido_. If Jarvis were Tony's friend, he was one of the oldest and best. They'd been through all kinds of hell together, just the two of them, and the thought of Jarvis developing an emotional attachment to somebody else was more than Tony could take.

And that wasn't fair, was it? Because if Jarvis were a _person_, then who he got attached to wasn't up to Tony. If he were a person, then Tony couldn't own or claim him, no matter what sort of body he were occupying. Was _that _what Dr. Strange had wanted them to learn? If so, it was a hard lesson. Thinking about it made something in Tony's chest clench, forming a deep, dull ache just behind the arc reactor. Tony Stark wasn't good at sharing. He'd looked a god in the eye and told him, 'don't touch my stuff'. He'd stood in a courtroom and refused to give up the Iron Man suit even under threat of imprisonment. He didn't want to share Jarvis with _anyone_. The thought of sharing him with Dido Windham, of all people, was just insult on top of injury.

"Don't worry about it," Rhodey advised him. "Mr. Wizard will be back in a few days and everything will get back to normal, right?"

Tony shrugged. Since his little ephiphany yesterday afternoon, the return of Dr. Strange had ceased to be a comforting thought. He was pretty sure that the only way the whole mess could ever get back to what had once been 'normal' would be if Jarvis were left with no memory of the past few days – and for some reason that was horrifying. Besides, what was the point of giving somebody a 'learning experience' if you were just going to snatch it away again?

"Tony," said Rhodey, "it's obvious this is bugging you, and I get it, but you can't get distracted right now. We've got stuff to do."

Tony nodded.

There followed a slightly awkward moment in which Tony – and probably Rhodey, too – dwelled on the fact that men really weren't supposed to talk about their emotional issues. Fortunately, Pepper interrupted it by arriving with an electric shaver and a stick of deodorant she'd scrounged up somewhere, and Tony headed into the bathroom to deal with the very manly activity of cleaning up.

Dido and Jarvis had both finished in the shower right now: she was blow-drying her hair, and he was towelling off with one leg up on a bench. He didn't seem at all worried that Dido was still in the room, and it made Tony wonder, once again, whether she'd already seen it. He wasn't about to ask, though – he handed Jarvis the shaver and deodorant, told him to use them, and then took his own shower.

He got out to find that Pepper had, in her mysterious way, somehow procured a clean suit for Jarvis, too. It didn't fit him as well as the tailored one, but that didn't seem to make any difference to his comfort level – Tony was just going to have to accept that Jarvis wasn't meant to wear suits. He was now staring into the mirror, concentration evident on his face as he knotted his tie.

Tony went and picked up the shaver, then took another look at Jarvis and gave him a poke. "You missed a spot," he said. There was still quite a bit of ginger-blond stubble on Jarvis' chin and upper lip.

The two of them looked at each other in silence for a moment, and Tony suddenly realized that what he'd assumed was a botched shave had, in fact, been intentional.

"Nuh-uh," he said. "You don't have the right face for it." He pressed the shaver into Jarvis' hand.

After cleaning up, everybody met in one of the board rooms that was set up for teleconferencing. Jarvis transferred the data set he'd generated, and he and Tony kept interrupting each other as they made a point of the operation's narrow margins of error: a hundred yards in the wrong direction, or half a second too soon or too late, could ruin the whole thing with no second chance. The Captain of the _Van Buren_ looked decidedly unimpressed by the plan, describing it at one point as 'stopping a bomb with another goddamn bomb', but he had his orders.

Jarvis patched a data feed from the aircraft carrier into his holographic map of the ocean floor, to show the locations of the ship and the planes that would be dropping off the explosive charges. Tony wasn't sure that was entirely legal, but he appreciated being able to watch, so he didn't comment on it. Once the planes were in the air, all anyone could do was wait and hope everything went according to plan.

While they waited, Tony toyed with ideas for things Jarvis might be able to do now. They could probably have him inspect the building's computer security, for one: he might be able to find weaknesses and loopholes that nobody else would even notice until it was too late, and fix them, too. Actually, he would still be able to do that even after Dr. Strange put him back in the house, but that sounded like... well, less _fun_, if nothing else.

The charges were dropped. The timers began to count down.

Finally, the moment arrived. When the first charge went off, the dot representing its location in the holographic map lit up red, then flashed several times as the explosives detonated in sequence, building up the wave as Huang's original blast had done. Jarvis was hunched over Pepper's laptop, watching the data come in. He didn't even look up as he announced, "on schedule."

The second charge went off ten minutes later, and the third another six minutes after that. And then... that was it. They were done.

"On schedule," Jarvis confirmed.

Tony allowed himself to breathe out – suddenly he was very, very tired. Pepper, sitting next to him, squeezed his hand. On the other side of the table, Rhodey and Agent Wheeler both let their straight-backed bearing sag a little, and Jarvis shut the laptop with a click and rubbed the corners of his eyes, obviously exhausted.

Dido had been up and pacing the room – Tony could remember her doing that during the brief period when they'd lived together, whenever she was worried about something, and it had been annoying then, too. Now she sat down and slumped forward, resting her head and arms on the table.

"Did it work?" she asked.

"If the calculations were correct," said Jarvis, copying her posture. Tony wondered if both of them intended to go to sleep right there.

"What if they're wrong?" Dido wanted to know. "What if somebody made a mistake somewhere? How will we know?"

"We'll find out between 12:12 and 12:17 PM," Jarvis replied.

Tony really couldn't help feeling as if the whole thing were a tremendous anticlimax. This was probably a side effect of his normal approach to problem-solving, which tended to involve blowing things up in a much more up-close-and-personal fashion. Watching dots appear in a hologram while a bunch of military personnel took care of the heavy lifting left Tony feeling a lack of closure. How could it really be over without the proverbial earth-shattering kaboom?

But as Jarvis had pointed out, the only thing they could really do now was sit and wait and hope for the best. As they left Stark Industries, the sun was rising over the mountains and the city was beginning to wake up. There was far less traffic on the streets than normal, but that was doubtless due to the official tsunami warning that had gone out over the radio and television. Agent Wheeler still wanted Tony and the others to leave the city, but the refused to go any further than back to the motel in Arcadia. Those with superhero credentials wanted to stay close to the coast, just in case.

Since Balthazar Windham had gone to Las Vegas, while Pepper was now with the others, there was some re-shuffling of sleeping arrangements. Clint, Natasha, and Steve took one room, while Tony, Pepper, Jarvis, and Dido got the other. This initially gave Tony a few concerns, but he quickly realized that nobody was going to be sharing a bed in anything but the most innocent sense. This time, it was Dido who flopped onto the bed with her clothes still on. Jarvis divested himself of jacket, tie, and shirt, and then for some reason lay down in the opposite direction, with his bare feet on the pillow and his head at the end of the bed.

Tony didn't wake him up to ask why – he just stripped down to his boxers and got into bed with Pepper, curling around her to press his face into her hair and breathe her in. She'd been using a citrus-scented shampoo, and the smell was warm, tangy, and comfortable.

"Too tired," she murmured, as he ran his fingers over the curve of her bare shoulder and down into the dip between her ribcage and hip.

"'Sokay," he replied sleepily. "Me, too. Love you, Pep."

"Love you, Tony," she said, lacing her fingers through his.

And that, he thought, as he drifted off to sleep, was what made the world worth the trouble of saving.


	20. Chapter 20: Aftershocks

Maybe it was surprising that Tony was able to sleep that morning. After all, there was still some possibility, even if it were a relatively slim one, that things could go wrong. Under normal circumstances Tony would have trusted Jarvis' calculations without even giving it a first thought, never mind a second – but they'd all had a stressful day followed by too little sleep and too much caffeine, and Jarvis was now as human as the rest of them, in a physical sense if nothing else. They'd done very little double-checking, because there simply hadn't been time. All it would take was one misplaced decimal point, one wrong keystroke by a man who was hardly an expert typist…

... but in spite of all that, Tony must have slept like the dead. The next thing he knew, Pepper was gently shaking him awake. Sunlight was pouring in the window, the other bed was empty, and he could hear somebody in the shower, though it was hard to tell whether that was in their room or the one next door. He looked up at Pepper.

"Morning," he said. Where the sunlight fell on her, her red hair lit up with gold.

"It's afternoon," she replied.

Tony glanced at the bedside clock – _2:35_. "So it is," he said.

"Agent Wheeler called," Pepper said. She must have been up for a while already, because she'd showered and dressed. Her hair was still damp. "There've been some flooded basements in beachfront communities, but nothing that qualifies as a tidal wave."

Tony shut his eyes, relieved. "If Jarvis drew a salary, I'd give him a raise."

"You'll have to upgrade his RAM or something," said Pepper lightly.

This was meant as a joke, but it still made Tony a little uncomfortable. Among other things, he wasn't sure how one went about being the caretaker for a truly sentient machine. What kind of responsibilities would that entail? What were the _rights _of a self-aware computer? At least when it came to looking after human beings, there were rules involved. Tony decided to change the subject. "Two thirty, huh? I'll bet we can still be in Lake Louise in time for dinner. You call the plane, I'll get everybody together. We won't even bother to pack." He smiled hopefully.

But Pepper shook her head. "Agent Wheeler wants us to stay in the city for a few days at least. She said the FBI might have more questions for you, and I imagine SHIELD will have a few, as well."

"Just how I wanted to spend my day," Tony grumbled, disappointed. "Okay, Plan B: you tell her I'm still traumatized from being kidnapped, and you and I just stay in bed all day."

Pepper, as usual, was all practicality. "This motel doesn't have room service."

"Oh, fine, I'll get up." Tony sighed as he sat up, and ran a hand through his hair. Getting messy, he noted – probably time for a trim. Jarvis would need one, too, if he were going to be sticking around. "Where's everybody else?" he asked.

"Steve, Clint, and Natasha were still in their room last time I checked," said Pepper, "but they're all up. They were watching _Spongebob _when Agent Wheeler called. Steve was trying very hard to look like he wasn't enjoying it." She ran her fingers gently around the edge of the arc reactor. "Dido went for a jog, and Jarvis is feeding birds."

Tony's first reaction was that this had to be a euphemism for something, but he couldn't figure out what. "Jarvis is... sorry?" he asked.

"Come and see," said Pepper, smiling.

Tony threw a shirt on and looked out the motel room window. Jarvis was sitting on a bench at the edge of the parking lot, next to an elderly woman who had apparently taken charge of teaching him how to feed the small crowd of chickadees and titmice that had gathered at their feet. The birds were clearly used to getting handouts – they were very tame and rather fat, and one of them actually hopped onto Jarvis' hand, hoping to get closer to the food. He twitched in surprise and the bird quickly flew away, but when he turned to the woman next to him the grin on his face was a mile wide.

Tony turned away from the window. "I don't know what I'm going to do with him," he admitted to Pepper.

"I suppose it depends on how long he's here for," she said. "You'll think of something."

Her confidence should have helped, but it didn't. This had become a _people _problem. Tidal waves had now joined the list of things Tony Stark knew how to deal with. _People _were still somewhere in limbo.

"Here comes Dido," Pepper observed, looking out the window again.

Tony stood up straight. One thing he was sure of: he was not leaving Jarvis alone with Dido Windham again. "I'm hungry," he said. "I think we should all go get something to eat, don't you?"

There was an IHOP about a block away that was advertising a brunch special, so Tony rounded everybody up and treated them. They pushed two tables together and ordered some of everything, so everyone could pick and choose what they wanted. Jarvis looked decidedly nervous as plates of waffles and sausages were set out in front of them, and Tony wondered why. Then he saw Jarvis carefully unroll the paper napkin from around his knife and form, and remembered that he'd only once before tried to use cutlery. That had been at breakfast on Tuesday – he'd been clumsy with the utensils and quickly gave them up. Since then he'd avoided foods he couldn't eat with his hands.

Now almost everything in front of them was either sticky or greasy, and he had no choice. Tony realized that this was another opportunity to be helpful instead of being a jerk, and seized it.

"Here," he said, unwrapping his own utensils. "Jarvis. I'll show you."

He demonstrated how to arrange his fingers, and showed Jarvis how to use his knife to push things onto the tines of the fork. As accomplishments went, it certainly wasn't on the scale of stopping a tidal wave, or even of fixing the company server, but Tony felt a little proud all the same as Jarvis began to get the hang of it.

"See?" he said. "Nothing to it."

Jarvis nodded, carefully spearing half a strawberry on his fork. "I've watched you do this so many times," he mused. "I wouldn't have expected to find it so challenging." He put the fruit in his mouth and chewed slowly and carefully, then looked surprised a moment before shutting his eyes and making a small 'mmm' noise.

Tony supposed there probably wasn't much difference between theory and practice to a mind in a computer. "Tonight we'll go out for Chinese," he promised, "and try you on chopsticks!"

Rather belatedly, Tony remembered that Dido was still with them, and wondered what she'd thought of the lesson. She'd already gotten the idea that Jarvis was a little weird – enough so that something she'd told her father had apparently convinced him that 'Dr. Jarvis' was a _robot _– and seeing that he didn't know how to use a knife and fork wouldn't have helped. But when Tony looked at her, he was relieved to find that Clint and Natasha had distracted her by telling some kind of story that involved thirty million Euro, a donkey, a prison break, and an Armenian cult that was searching for the remains of Noah's ark.

Above the tables, TV sets were tuned to a news channel, and not unexpectedly, the day's top story was about the overnight evacuation attempt. "The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a tsunami warning for the California coast just after four this morning," the anchorman announced, "but Los Angelinos were able to breathe a sigh of relief when it was rescinded shortly before one PM. Families evacuated from costal neighbourhoods are being allowed to return to their homes, many of them with children still thrilled from having had the opportunity to meet a superhero." The program showed footage of Steve signing autographs for two little boys and their sister – all three children were dressed in red, white, and blue 'Captain America' pajamas.

Clint pointed at the screen with his fork. "One of those cops gave Steve his phone number."

"I told him I wasn't interested," said Steve.

"Was he at least cute?" Tony teased.

Steve took another bite of sausage and didn't answer.

The news switched to another story: a reporter standing on a dock in San Francisco began talking about a missing ship. Tony didn't pay very much attention until he heard its name: "the Air Force has confirmed," the woman said, "that it lost touch with the USS _Van Buren_ at approximately ten thirty AM this morning. No official statement has been made about the condition or location of the carrier or her crew, and rumours are flying about everything from a terrorist attack to a UFO abduction."

"I wonder what that's all about," said Pepper.

"Probably just part of the whole secrecy thing," said Tony dismissively. It did make him a little sore to know that he and Jarvis were unlikely to ever get public credit for averting the catastrophe. He could understand the secrecy – the idea that somebody could use the ocean itself as a weapon of terror was the sort of thing that tended to make people nervous – but he was also a pretty firm believer in the idea of credit where credit was due, which wasn't a bad excuse for the part of him that liked to be in the limelight. The part that did stupid things like stand up at a press conference and tell the world,_ I am Iron Man_.

The juxtaposition of those thoughts made Tony think of something else: "oh, hey," he said. "Dido? Whose idea was it for you to meet Huang in California? Yours or his?"

"I don't know," she replied. "I'd have to ask Dad. He set it up. Why?"

Tony chewed thoughtfully on a mouthful of ham and cheese omelet. "Because if Huang was already pissed at me for destroying his weapons and equipment in Taiwan, he might've picked this area because my home and company are here..." The tsunami, if not neutralized, would certainly have taken out the Malibu house and done a lot of damage to the manufacturing districts, where Stark Industries and its factories were located. It made sense as a target for somebody with reasons to hate Iron Man. Kidnapping Tony and Jarvis to ensure their deaths by drowning had probably been a crime of opportunity, but it no longer looked like Balthazar Windham had been the only target.

A moment later, Tony's thoughts screeched to a halt as he realized that if the wave had destroyed the Malibu house, it would also have been the end of JARVIS. Was _that _what Dr. Strange had hoped to accomplish – saving the life of what he'd realized was a sentient being? Damn, this whole thing was complicated.

"Tony?" asked Pepper.

"Huh?" He blinked, and realized he'd let himself trail off in mid-sentence and gotten lost in thought. "Sorry, I zoned out for a minute there." He speared another piece of omelet. "Pepper, when you talked to Wheeler, did she give you any idea how they were doing interrogating the bad guys?"

A few minutes later, Tony's phone rang. He fished it out and then groaned when he saw the call display: _Wheeler, P_. Did all annoying secret agents have names that started with P? It was tempting to just ignore it and hope she would think he was still in bed, but she might well have news about whether or not Huang had started talking. Not to mention Pepper would be mad at him if he upset the FBI again. He pressed 'connect'.

"Stark," he said, because people who threatened to arrest him did not deserve 'hello'.

Apparently Wheeler didn't extend that courtesy to him, either. "Are you guys still all together?" she asked.

"We're having breakfast," said Tony, tacitly daring her to point out that it was three in the afternoon.

She didn't take the bait. "We've got a problem."

"What kind of a problem and why does it involve me?" asked Tony.

"We're not sure," Wheeler replied, "but it's coming our way, and it's big. Pack up your breakfast and meet me outside."

"What if I don't want to?" asked Tony.

"Too late," said Wheeler. A horn beeped in the parking lot, and Tony looked out the window to see Wheeler herself standing next to a blue FBI van.

They asked the waitress for doggy bags and went outside to meet Wheeler. Rhodey was with her.

"Just can't leave me alone, can you?" Tony asked them.

As on the phone, Wheeler didn't bother with a greeting. "I do have some good news," she said, as they approached. "One of Huang's goons is talking. The test was, indeed, sponsored by the Tian Ming. The tsunami was intended as a threat to the Chinese government and its supporters, to show them what the group was capable of and to demonstrate that the West won't be able to help them. So that's not exactly wonderful, but it could have been much worse. At least we're not going to war."

"What's the bad news?" asked Steve.

"We don't even know," sighed Wheeler. "Colonel Rhodes can tell you about it."

Tony noted to himself that he was seriously disappointed in real-life FBI vehicles. In movies, FBI agents always cruised in black vintage vehicles with leather interiors – bumping around in a navy blue van that might've belonged to a Connecticut soccer mom was a completely different experience and made him want to give the Bureau some kind of donation so they could buy new cars. Working for the FBI should at least get people a cool car.

"The first sign of trouble came shortly after you guys left downtown," Rhodey explained. "The US Geological Survey detected a series of unusual tremors not far from your second blast site. They assumed it was just subsistence or aftershocks, but they sent a boat out to take a closer look, just in case there were a gas pocket or magma chamber down there."

"What did they find?" asked Tony.

"We don't know. They lost touch with the vessel before it arrived," said Rhodey. "The Coast Guard sent a plane to go look for them, but all the pilot found was a fuel slick and one empty life raft."

Steve leaned forward, lacing his fingers together. "So whatever happened, it happened fast."

"Then we lost contact with the Van Buren," Rhodey went on. "They found the stern capsized – the other half seems to have gone down. They're fishing the survivors out of the water right now, but so far most of them are in pretty bad shape and nobody's been able to tell us much. Meanwhile the USGS is still getting tremors and they're moving towards the coastline. It's not following a plate boundary or any real predictable path, so we don't know where it's going or when it'll get there, but so far on average it's moving towards the coast."

That wasn't nearly enough information for Tony to come to any conclusions. It could be anything from an underwater volcano to an alien invasion, although Tony really hoped he wouldn't have to go through two alien invasions in one lifetime. "And you have no idea what it is?"

"It could be a sea monster for all we know," said Wheeler.

"Are those under FBI jurisdiction?" Clint apparently couldn't resist.

"They're not under _anybody's _jurisdiction," Wheeler grunted, "although I'm sure the History Channel's already sent some guys. The Air Force and your friend Director Fury asked me to help because I was in town and according to them I already have a rapport with you guys."

"That's news to us, too," Tony told her. "Jarvis, we downloaded all those seafloor maps when we started our seismology project last year. What's in the area where the second blast happened?"

"I don't remember anything of note," said Jarvis, "but my memory isn't what it used to be. I did double-check the backup maps on the company server. If there were any known geological dangers there, I would have chosen a different site."

When they'd left the restaurant, Jarvis had brought a container of fruit salad with him and had been munching on it as they drove, picking out the strawberry halves to eat first. Now, however, the food seemed to have been forgotten, and Tony noticed that Jarvis' face had gone white under his sunburn. He felt a surge of sympathy: that was a horrible feeling, realizing that you'd broken one thing in the attempt to fix another.

"So you guys are the geniuses," Wheeler said, looking at Tony and Jarvis. "We need you to figure out what you pissed off and how we put it back to bed."

"You really think this is something alive?" asked Steve.

"We have no idea," Rhodey said. "Nobody's come up with a better theory yet."

The industrial districts were quiet for a Thursday afternoon, although not eerily so. The city had begun to recover from the aborted tsunami warning and was finding its groove again: traffic and tourists were out in the streets, but a substantial minority of businesses had chosen to remain closed just in case. Stark Industries was not one of those, and they arrived to find the complex bustling.

Tony had a sudden sinking feeling. "Pepper," he said, "we have to send all of these people home."

She nodded. "What should I tell them?" Wheeler and Rhodey had made it clear that for now the mysterious tremors, like the true story behind the tsunami scare, had to stay secret. Public panic would only make things much, much worse.

"Anything," said Tony. "Make something up. Tell them it's my birthday."

"They know it's not your birthday," Pepper reminded him, and she was right: Tony had made kind of an ass of himself last year, and the footage had hit YouTube within minutes of the party's breakup. Nobody was likely to forget the date for a while yet.

"Tell them it's my un-birthday," said Tony. "Tell them it's your birthday. Something. I don't care. Dido, help Pepper make sure everybody leaves. Pretend you work in accounting – they'll flee as soon as you enter the room. Superheroes, geniuses, and secret agents, you guys are with me." He shooed the party towards the elevator, then looked back at Pepper. "We could've been on our way to Lake Louise!" he said.

She rolled her eyes and shook her head, but waved goodbye with a fond smile.

* * *

Back in the office, Jarvis brought up his holographic map again and input the new seismic data, indicating the recent tremors as a cloud of yellow dots. Something inside him felt as if it were tying itself in knots. He kept thinking about all the maps he'd looked at, the data he'd analyzed, trying to figure out _what he'd missed_. In choosing the times and places for the three blast sequences, he'd tried to take into account both the geophysics and the ecology of the seafloor, doing the least damage to both. He couldn't think what he'd done wrong, and yet he had a horrible crawling feeling that he _should have known_. That anything bad which happened now was going to be _his fault_.

He could see the others frowning as they examined his map, and he knew why – he, too, was disappointed. He'd been hoping that placing the tremors in context would show some sort of pattern, but there was none besides the general westward trend Colonel Rhodes and Agent Wheeler were already aware of. Even that was only a trend. From the place where the Geological Survey ship was lost, the tremors moved in more or less a straight line to the wreck of the Van Buren, but after that, it wandered. It did not line up with landscape features of the sea bottom, or with the local fault lines.

"Maybe Huang had a backup plan?" Mr. Stark suggested. "I don't know what kind of backup plan could take out an aircraft carrier, but... are these man-made explosions?" he looked at Jarvis.

"No," Jarvis replied, rotating the display with strawberry-stained fingers – he didn't yet have much to compare them to, but he was fairly certain that strawberries were going to be among his favourite foods. After realizing that people had _died _because of his choice of a second blast site, however, even those had no longer looked appetizing. "Blast tremors are brief and localized. These are drawn out and dispersed, as if the epicentre moves over the course of each."

Colonel Rhodes agreed with him. "The USGS already looked into that. They don't think these are explosions, but they don't seem to be geological in origin, either. Believe me, if it were something that obvious, we'd have left you to your pancakes."

"Not man-made and not geological," said Mr. Stark. "What's that leave, then?"

"It's got to be something big moving around down there," said Captain Rogers. "Some animal."

Jarvis sort of hoped he was right – somehow, that would make this new situation seem less like _his fault._ Things had just started to seem like they were going to be all right after all. Jarvis had useful things he could do again, Mr. Stark was no longer angry at him or ignoring him, and everything would be fine when Dr. Strange returned. But now... for the first time in many months, Mr. Stark had given Jarvis a task, and Jarvis had _failed_. The result might well be a worse problem than the one they'd just solved. That wasn't how things were supposed to work. If Mr. Stark discarded Jarvis after that... well, Jarvis would feel he'd deserved it.

He was skeptical of Captain Rogers' theory, though. "An unknown sea creature big enough to capsize an aircraft carrier?" he asked.

"We know more about the far side of the Moon than the deep ocean," Agent Romanoff offered. "After all, we've been to the moon."

Captain Rogers frowned. "This may be a silly question, but just for clarity's sake - do you mean you _personally_?" he asked.

That made Mr. Stark laugh, although it was thin, nervous laughter. "I wouldn't put it past her," he said. "You guys have been watching the nature channel, haven't you?" he asked Agents Barton and Romanoff.

"_Blue Planet_," Agent Barton confirmed. "There's a lot of David Attenborough on Netflix."

Mr. Stark rubbed the side of his neck and studied the holographic map again. "It looks like the only way to find out for sure is to get out there and take a look at it – preferably by air, since it doesn't seem to like boats. I wish I had my suit!" Jarvis may have been able to perform many of his analytical functions in this body, but he was still well-attuned to the nuances of Mr. Stark's voice, and his frustration was very audible.

"I'm sorry," Jarvis began, but Tony held up a hand to quiet him.

"Not your fault," he said. "We'll just have to work with it. Okay: Thor's off getting over a divine hangover somewhere, I'm grounded, and these three only _think _they can fly. Agent Wheeler, do you guys have any more helicopters around, or did you give your last one to Balthazar Windham?"

_Not your fault_, he'd said – but it _was _Jarvis' fault, wasn't it? Early on Monday morning Dr. Strange had tried to engage Jarvis in a conversation about the nature of consciousness. Jarvis had treated it as a joke, and then _this _had happened. If he hadn't angered the sorcerer, Mr. Stark would still have access to the Iron Man Suit. And then there was being kidnapped alongside Miss Windham, and now this fiasco with the second blast location... the more Jarvis thought about it, the more his actions over the past few days seemed like nothing but a catalogue of mistakes. Maybe, he thought miserably, that was the 'learning experience' Dr. Strange had wanted him to have. Maybe the difference between human and artificial consciousness was that the latter could not cope with free will. Jarvis had certainly made a mess with his.

"Jarvis?" said Mr. Stark.

He looked up, and realized he'd missed the last few seconds of the conversation. "Sir?" he asked, then corrected himself again: "Tony?" It felt odd to address him by name, and required an effort every time. Jarvis didn't feel _worthy _of it. Calling Mr. Stark 'Tony' was for people like Miss Potts, Colonel Rhodes, and Captain Rogers – for his _friends_.

Mr. Stark himself didn't appear to mind, though. "I'm gonna need you to stay here and watch the USGS data coming in, and our position. Keep us posted, make sure we're looking in the right spot, and don't let anything sneak up on us."

Jarvis swallowed. "I would prefer to come with you." _Where Stark is_. He hadn't even done a very good job of _that_.

"I need you here," Mr. Stark told him firmly. "You're our earthquake expert. You've been working with those seismographs for months."

"I feel somewhat responsible," Jarvis persisted.

Mr. Stark's answer was immediate and blunt: "then don't. Not your fault, okay? You had no idea this was going to happen, so don't blame yourself. We're all tired and strung out, but we did just fix a tidal wave. Whatever this is, we can fix it, too. Feeling guilty doesn't solve anything."

_Guilty_. That knotted feeling inside of him, the inability to understand how Mr. Stark could forgive him so quickly when he clearly didn't deserve to be forgiven... that was _guilt_. Jarvis wished he were back in the house computer where he would never again be subject to it. "Guilt is a terrible emotion," he said.

Mr. Stark's expression softened. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, it is."

That was when Jarvis had another unexpected flash of insight. This one wasn't an _idea_, however – it was something else. He knew there was a word for it: it meant_ identification with the knowledge of the experiences of another_...

_Empathy_. That was it – because Mr. Stark must know all about guilt. He must carry far more of it than Jarvis could ever imagine. Guilt was the emotion that had made Mr. Stark discontinue his company's production of weapons and become Iron Man. He'd said as much, on more than one occasion.

The experience of empathy wasn't exactly a _good _feeling, because what Jarvis and Mr. Stark were sharing was an awful, painful thing. Yet the sense of connection was... perhaps 'empowering' was the right word. Mr. Stark had taken his guilt and turned it into productivity, into Iron Man and things like the seismic prediction project that were intended to help people rather than hurt them – and that was what he was asking Jarvis to do now.

"Very well," he said. "I'll try to keep you out of harm's way."

"That's what you do best," Mr. Stark replied.


	21. Chapter 21: Where Stark Is

Agent Wheeler managed to find them a coast guard helicopter that seated four, counting the pilot: Rhodey took the controls, Tony the front seat, and Steve and Agent Wheeler the back. Clint and Natasha volunteered to contact Fury and try again to get in touch with someone who had actual superpowers, while Pepper and Dido emptied Stark Industries and called NOAA, trying to get the tsunami warning, or something like it, reinstated.

It wasn't the emergency, however, that was making Tony feel some _deja vu_. Here he was, flying low over the ocean with Jarvis' voice in his ears – that was a familiar feeling indeed, and the familiarity made the differences stand out sharply. A helicopter was a much louder, rougher ride than the Iron Man suit, and hearing Jarvis crackly and distant in the headphones was disconcerting, not at all like having him right there in the armour. Tony felt half-naked, heading into a dangerous situation without him.

The sea and sky today were deceptively tranquil. Last night's storm had cleared, and once the helicopter was out of sight of land, there was nothing but steady, brilliant blue stretching out to the horizon on all sides of them, interrupted only by a few fluffy white clouds and their reflections on the gently rippling ocean surface. Some people might have found it calming, but it was making Tony jumpy – when everything looked the same on all sides, there was no telling what direction a nasty surprise might come from. He found himself remembering a story Thor had told one night about his battle with the great serpent Jormungandr who lurked in the depths of the sea. It had been a hell of a tale, full of shipwrecks and mermaids and all sorts of deep-dwelling monstrosities... and Tony hadn't dared ask about the weird bit where the 'great serpent' was actually Thor's _nephew_.

"Tony," said Jarvis – every time he used the name he sounded as if he expected to be reprimanded for it, "there's news that may be relevant."

"Lay it on me," said Tony.

Tony had a laptop open on his knees so Jarvis could stream him updated maps and any other information he thought they'd need – now a series of photographs popped up one after another. "Satellite images from this morning appear to show pods of whales and dolphins moving north _en masse_. This is not their normal migration season."

"Duly noted," said Tony, clicking through them. As usual, only humans were dumb enough to move _towards _a threat. The wildlife had the good sense to get out of the way. Not all the pictures showed marine mammals fleeing – there was one that showed half a carcass of a sperm whale, with intestines trailing from its abdomen. The bite taken out was much too big for any shark outside of an Italian horror movie. "How's our friend downstairs?" asked Tony. "Looks like it stopped for a snack."

The laptop display flicked back to the latest map, with the movements of their unknown target picked out in a cloud of yellow dots. "Still proceeding roughly northwest," said Jarvis. "If it stays on its present course, you should cross paths with it in roughly fifteen minutes."

"Got it." Tony rotated the map with the trackpad for a better angle, and grumbled mentally about how much clumsier it was than the suit display that responded to the movements of his eyes. This might not be as user-friendly, but it got the idea across, and it was a pretty worrying idea. Whatever they were looking for, it was somehow able to seek out human presence. It had found the USGS boat and the _Van Buren_, and as more information came in they'd learned that it had also taken out an offshore oil platform – the latter was, thankfully, no longer functional and only used as a research station. An oil slick would have been the ecological icing on the cake of general disaster today was serving up.

But the creature's ability to find people was something Tony suspected was important. He had a theory about it, and had asked the coast guard for some equipment so that he could test it. The unknown animal had appeared after a seafloor explosion, and all the things it had destroyed so far were _machines_, with engines and moving parts. It reminded Tony of a film he really ought to make Steve watch.

"Jarvis," he said, "what was that Kevin Bacon movie with the big burrowing monsters?"

"_Tremors_," Jarvis replied. There was a moment's pause, and he asked, "do you believe this hypothetical animal is finding targets by sound?"

"Seems logical," said Tony. "Sound travels further in water than in air, and everything it's gone after has been loud." Even the whale – whales were famous for singing.

"Hey, Jarvis," said Rhodey, "that reminds me: I've always wondered, what's Tony's Bacon number?"

"Two," Jarvis replied. "He has twice dated actresses who were in Mr. Bacon's movies."

Steve frowned. "If that was a reference to something I didn't get it."

Tony watched the map update again, then reached out and grabbed Rhodey's sleeve. "This looks good," he said. "Let's drop the speaker and see if we can get this thing to come to us."

Rhodey put the helicopter into hover, while Steve and Wheeler got out the stuff Tony had borrowed from UCLA: an underwater speaker that could be lowered on a length of cable, usually used to study whale behaviour. Tony plugged a USB key into his laptop and opened the passenger side door. Salt wind whipped up by the rotor came roaring in. Steve dropped the speaker, and the cable began to unspool.

"Okay, Jarvis," said Tony. "Let's make some noise. Want to teach our new friend a thing or two about classic rock?"

"I can only hope it will be a more enthusiastic student than Captain Rogers," said Jarvis. A window popped up as the laptop downloaded a sound file – a moment alter it was done, and Black Sabbath came roaring out of the speaker.

"Only fair to warn it who it's dealing with," said Tony.

"It will take about fifteen seconds for the sound to propagate to the creature's last recorded location," Jarvis said.

Tony kept an eye on his watch. Twelve... thirteen... fourteen... "any reaction?"

"Not enough data yet," said Jarvis.

Several more seconds crawled by. The map did not change. "Jarvis?"asked Tony. "Keep me in the loop, buddy."

Jarvis didn't answer at first. Finally he said, "nothing."

"Nothing? It's not moving?"

"I don't know," said Jarvis, and there was a note of something in his voice that Tony had never heard before. JARVIS could sound _concerned_, but this was... tighter, more visceral. "I can only see where it is when it impacts the sea floor, and right now there's nothing!"

"Stay calm, Jarvis," Tony told him. "You don't see it. What do you think that means?"

"It's either staying still, or..." there was the sound of a nervous swallow. "Or it's moved up into the water column for greater speed."

Tony could tell which one Jarvis was worried about. "It's all right, we're watching out. Let us know the moment you see something."

"Nothing out my side," said Steve.

"Nothing here," Wheeler agreed.

"Clear in front," said Rhodey.

Tony didn't see anything, either. There was nothing to do now but wait and watch, so wait and watch they did. After the Black Sabbath, Jarvis sent over some Meatloaf and some Rolling Stones – and Tony noticed a pattern. _Out of the Frying Pan (And Into the Fire)_ and _Gimme Shelter_ both seemed terribly appropriate for the day they were having, and he had to wonder if Jarvis had done that on purpose. Ordinarily he would have chalked it up to coincidence: Tony had programmed his computer to pick music for him based on an analysis of his moods, but the idea of selecting songs with titles or lyrics to suit a _situation _would require a measure of creativity that no computer possessed. Again, Tony wondered how many other new skills Jarvis had suddenly picked up – and whether Jarvis himself were aware of them. Would he miss them once Dr. Strange changed him back?

That whole idea was making Tony increasingly uncomfortable. His new perspective on the situation – now that he was bothering to pay attention to it – had left him feeling that changing Jarvis back wouldn't be... quite _fair_. Could Dr. Strange have really intended to give him things like free will and creative thought, and then just take them away again?

Tony wasn't great at philosophical problems, any more than he was at people-related ones. He needed to sit down and actually _talk _to somebody about this. Having a voice answering him helped him to think – that was why he'd made his AI capable of conversation in the first place. Maybe he should try Rhodey again. Or maybe Bruce, if Clint and Natasha managed to find him. Sometime when there were no disasters happening. Today wasn't looking good.

"Another tremor," Jarvis said suddenly. His voice was strained, as if it were taking every ounce of strength in him not to shout.

Tony shook himself out of his thoughts and looked at the new dot on the laptop map. He could no longer see the green cross that indicated the position of the helicopter. "Where?" he asked.

"Right below you."

That was all the warning they got. Suddenly, the sea beneath them seemed to explode. The helicopter was hovering around a hundred and fifty feet up, but through the open door Tony was suddenly showered with cold salt water. Rhodey cranked the craft into a climb, and at the same moment, something below them grabbed the speaker and yanked. The reel of cable was ripped from the floor of the helicopter with a squeal of tortured metal. Everything lurched violently, and the laptop slipped off Tony's knees – he grabbed for it, missed, and knocked his headphones off against the door frame. They and the laptop both plummeted into the ocean.

Without the soundproof headphones, Tony had to clap his hands over his ears against the din of the rotors. He could just barely hear Steve shouting, "it's okay, Jarvis! He's fine! He just lost his headset!"

Agent Wheeler had already dragged a spare pair out from under her seat and passed them up. Tony put them on, and was shocked by what he heard: Jarvis was on the verge of panic.

"Can you hear me?" he was asking. "You need to come back! You need to come back right now!"

"We're not leaving, Jarvis," said Tony. "We came out here to see what this thing is – we're not gonna run away the moment we find it." He couldn't see anything from where he was sitting. Whatever had taken the speaker was hidden by the floor of the helicopter. "I'm gonna take a look," he announced, and began unbuckling his seat belt so he could lean out.

"Please don't do anything foolish!" Jarvis begged him. "You are not Iron Man without the suit!"

Tony opened his mouth to argue, but stopped himself. "You know what?" he said. "You are absolutely right." He looked around. "Have we got a rope or something so we can make sure I don't fall out or get grabbed?"

"I don't know if it'll do anything for getting grabbed," said Rhodey, "but there should be a rescue harness under the seats."

Steve reached over the seat to help Tony strap himself into that, and then Steve and Wheeler held on as Tony leaned out the open door for his first good look at what was below them.

At first he couldn't make any sense of what he was seeing. It was a shapeless, roiling mass of purple-brown spines, rippling with a ghostly blue-grey glow. It looked like a seafood hot pot gone horribly wrong, like something an underpaid animator might come up with for a _Star Trek_ monster of the week, like an H. P. Lovecraft acid trip. Then more of it surfaced, and Tony found himself looking into an empty white eye the size of the helicopter. The slimy purple skin around the eye looked blistered and scarred... had the explosion blinded the animal? Was that why it went after loud things, because that was all it could find?

"Tony!" said Rhodey. "What do you see?"

"Hell if I know!" Tony replied.

And that was when, out of a clear blue sky, lightning struck the helicopter.

If it hadn't been for the harness, Tony would have fallen right into the monster's tentacles. As it was, Steve managed to pull him back in, moments before the craft's violent lurching slammed the door shut again. The radio died in a burst of squealing static. Agent Wheeler's startled scream hit a note that by all rights should have shattered the windows, and Rhodey swore like a sailor as he fought for control. When Tony's head stopped spinning, he found there was a fifty person in the helicopter. Wheeler had pulled out her gun and was pointing it with shaking hands at the giant of a man who seemed to be filling the entire cabin. She was clearly terrified.

Steve, however, was elated. "Thor!" he exclaimed.

"Lower your weapon, Lady of Midgard!" Thor boomed at Wheeler. "I come as a friend, defender of your realm!"

"It's all right, Agent Wheeler," said Steve. "It's only Thor."

Wheeler stared at him. "_Only _Thor? _Only_?"

"Thor!" Tony echoed. "Are we glad to see you!"

The god looked over his shoulder at Tony, wearing an expression like a thundercloud. "Alas, I cannot share your sentiment!" he said. "Do you know what you've done, Stark?"

"We were just working on that," said Tony, "but it's probably faster if you tell us."

Thor was not in a joking mood. "Your foolish explosion," he growled, "has awakened the Kraken!"

* * *

Jarvis had never panicked. He didn't know how. He hadn't been programmed for it.

But he could learn.

There'd been a tremendous bang, like a thunderclap, followed by half a second of utter auditory chaos. Voices shouting jumbled together with unhappy electrical noises faded into a roar of static and then... nothing. Something icy settled inside Jarvis as he realized the radio had gone dead, followed by a suffocating pressure on his chest as he understood that there was nothing he could do about it. For a moment everything seemed to have stopped. It was impossible to move or think. All he could do was stare at the screen where the blip of the helicopter's GPS had been – and where it now was not.

"Sir?" he asked. "T-T-Tony?" The name didn't want to come out. "Captain Rogers? Can anyone hear me?" The only reply was hissing static.

Miss Potts stepped up behind him and leaned forward, hands on his shoulders. "What happened?" she asked urgently.

"I don't know. They're gone!" Jarvis could feel his whole body pulsing in time with his heartbeat. He'd never been this frightened, not even when the security guard had grabbed him at the hotel on Monday morning. Not even when he'd found himself naked in the garden and realized what Dr. Strange had done. "Tony!" he repeated into the microphone. "Please, somebody answer me! Colonel Rhodes! Agent Wheeler!"

"Jarvis!" Miss Potts squeezed his shoulders. "Breathe! You're not allowed to freak out on me. Take deep breaths and just tell me what happened."

"I don't know!" he repeated. He wanted to replay the moment, to break it down into layers, analyze what each voice was saying and what each sound was, and calculate likely scenarios from the results – but he couldn't do that now. A human brain wasn't capable of processing information int hat way, and even if it had been, it wouldn't have done anyone any good because he couldn't get to them.

He leaned on the desk, pushing his hands into his hair and shutting his eyes, all while cursing the body that allowed him to express his frustration and fear in that way. Something hot pricked at the corners of his eyes as he grappled with the horrible knowledge that this was_ his fault_. He'd done so many things wrong this week. If he hadn't upset Dr. Strange in the first place... if he hadn't gotten them all into this mess by letting Dido Windham manipulate him... if he'd drawn Tony's attention to the backups when he remembered them on Tuesday morning... if he'd been _where Stark is_ in body instead of just in voice...

Wait.

_That was it._

It was another amazing moment in which everything crystallized. What had been murky suddenly became perfectly clear, the answer appearing out of nowhere without any calculations at all: an _inspiration_. This one, however, was not exhilarating at all. It dropped into the pit of Jarvis' stomach like a stone and stayed there, weighing down his insides. He knew now exactly what it was he was supposed to do, exactly how he had to be _where Stark is_ and why nobody else could do it – and he knew exactly what it was going to cost him.

"Jarvis?" asked Miss Potts.

He raised his head a bit, and saw her holding out a tissue. Her eyes were shiny with suppressed tears, and he realized that his own must look the same. And then, as suddenly as he'd been overwhelmed, he found that he now felt completely calm. He knew what he had to do, and he would need some help to do it.

Jarvis stood up. "Miss Potts," he said. "I need to go to the Malibu house. I'd appreciate it if you would drive me, please."

She didn't question it. "I'll get the car," she said, grabbing her purse.

"Dido." Jarvis turned to the other woman, who'd been pacing the room nervously during Jarvis' conversation with the people in the helicopter, and was now huddled in a corner, rubbing her shoulders through the sleeves of her blouse. "Would you mind accompanying us? There will be a certain amount of lifting and carrying involved, and an extra set of hands will speed things up."

"Of course," she said. "Where's my jacket?"

Jarvis retrieved it from where she'd left it hung over the back of a chair, and the two of them followed Miss Potts into the elevator. As the doors closed, Dido buttoned her blazer and asked, "what are we doing?"

"We are saving Tony," Jarvis told her, and then continued quickly so that she couldn't get a chance to reply. "Don't tell me that I don't have to do this. I _know _I don't have to do it. I am _choosing _to do this." He'd been terrified of his own ability to choose – but choosing didn't have to mean saying _no_. Choosing could mean saying _yes_, even when he didn't have to.

Dido looked insulted. "What do you think I am?" she asked. "This is completely different. It's one thing to let a guy tell you to sit and wait in his hotel room all night. It's something else to go save somebody's life!"

"You don't even like Tony," said Jarvis, surprised.

"I don't, but that doesn't mean I want him to get killed!" She folded her arms across his chest. "Humiliated a little, maybe, but not killed. No matter how obnoxious he is, he's still a human being."

Jarvis nodded slowly – he understood. "Humans are very complicated creatures," he observed.

"Yeah," Dido agreed. "We're kind of..." she stopped herself, frowning, and looked Jarvis over carefully. "I'm sorry," she said, "but you're, uh, you're not an alien, are you?" It wasn't a joke – her face was utterly serious and a little frightened. "I mean, I saw the cutlery lesson at lunch. I didn't say anything because I could tell I wasn't supposed to, and anyway I wanted to know how they got the thirty million out of Gyumri..."

For the second time in the last twenty-four hours, Jarvis laughed. Dido's question was at once completely understandable and also utterly wrong, and the fact that it could be both at once was _funny_. As before, the reaction was involuntary and irresistible: he laughed. Without the edge of fear given it by wondering why he was doing it and why he couldn't stop, it actually felt quite good.

Miss Potts stared at him, plainly unsure what to make of this behaviour. Jarvis quickly calmed himself and said, "no, Dido. I'm not an alien."

"Okay." She was visibly relieved. "I just... had to ask."

From Stark Industries in Los Angeles to the house on Point Dume in Malibu was normally around a fifty-minute drive. It was a bit shorter today, because Miss Potts exceeded the speed limit for nearly the whole trip. She, in the driver's seat, and Dido, in the back, were both nervous and fidgety – but Jarvis, in the front passenger seat, found it impossible to worry. He _knew_, with that indefinite but rock-solid intuitive certainty, that this was what he was meant to do, and therefore, they would be on time to do it. This line of reasoning was, of course, ludicrous, and a computer wouldn't have accepted the conclusion for a moment, but Jarvis wasn't a computer. Not anymore.

"What are we doing when we get there?" asked Dido, leaning forward between the seats of Miss Potts' Audi.

Jarvis explained: "Tony hasn't been keeping backups." It was easier to use Mr. Stark's first name, for some reason, when not addressing him directly. "He worries that somebody will find them and take advantage of the information contained. The last ones he made were shortly before the incident with Mr. Stane. The program won't be capable of running the more recent Iron Man suits, but it will suffice for the Mark Five," that was the one that could fold up into a suitcase, "which was designed to require minimal AI."

"Backups?" Miss Potts glanced at him. "Does that mean what I think it means?"

"I can't read your mind, Miss Potts, but I suspect it does."

She licked her lips. "You really... you really think you can get them working?"

It was a silly question, of course. Tony was very thorough about his computer security, but if anyone knew every nook and cranny of the system, that was Jarvis. He realized, though, that the question Miss Potts had _asked_ was not the one she wanted an _answer _to.

"I know I can," he said.

She nodded.

Jarvis' first sight of the house was a strange feeling. He hadn't been back to it since he'd fished himself out of the rose garden and climbed into the Land Rover on Monday morning, and since then he'd acquired something of a new perspective on the place. It had been, in a sense, the world he lived in: an environment he inhabited and cared for, but not a part of himself. In the past few days, however, he'd begun to think of himself not just as a personality but as a _thing_, and looking at the house from outside was something of an out-of-body experience.

That was what Miss Potts had wanted to know: whether he was all right with the idea of confronting an earlier version of himself in what had once been his own place. He wasn't, not really – and he knew that once the house was back in working order, Tony would have no further use for _this_ Jarvis. The one sitting in the car, in this body, wearing this uncomfortable suit. But he couldn't let himself think about that right now. He had work to do, and he'd need to concentrate.

"Where are the backups?" Miss Potts asked, turning onto the road to the point.

"In a safe in the workshop," Jarvis replied.

"The big one? I thought that would only open for Tony's retinal scan."

"It will also open for yours."

That surprised her. "Mine? Tony never told me that."

"He told me that I should tell you if it ever became necessary," Jarvis said. "It's necessary now."

They were almost there.

The first sign of something seriously wrong was the lack of guards. Tony had, of course, hired some people to watch the house and grounds while he was away and the security system inactive. There should have been somebody there to greet them, to ask them what they wanted, to need reassurance from Miss Potts that they were authorized to be there and meant no harm. There was no-one.

They drove down to the workshop garage entrance and there saw the second ominous sign: the gardens were wet. Plants in the lower parts of the grounds had been stripped of their leaves. Rosebushes had been uprooted, and were lying in the driveway among pools of mud. It couldn't have been more than a few hours ago that this place had been underwater.

Miss Potts pulled to a stop. "Flooded basements," she said quietly.

"What?" asked Dido.

"It was on the news!" Miss Potts removed her seat belt and climbed out of the car. "The closest we came to a tidal wave was flooded basements in the coastal areas this morning!" She hurried towards the garage door.

The calm and confidence Jarvis had felt on the way suddenly drained out of him, leaving him cold and shaky. The house had been flooded. Both the backups he needed and the Iron Man suits were stored in the workshop. The workshop was in the basement – and so, as Jarvis knew only too well, was the computer.


	22. Chapter 22: Incoming Hostile

While Jarvis would have been relieved to know that the radio blackout was caused by Thor's arrival, rather than by the destruction of the helicopter, the actual situation on board hadn't improved very much.

"The _Kraken_?" asked Agent Wheeler. "Isn't that something out of a Disney movie?"

"Nay, Lady," Thor said. "I fear it is real indeed."

Tony could have sworn he heard Steve mutter, "I was in a Disney movie once."

As if to reinforce Thor's point, a gigantic tentacle rose from the water and whipped through the air towards the helicopter. The lower surface was covered with giant suckers, while the upper was studded with scaly armor plates that curled into giant hooks, all shimmering with an unearthly bioluminescence. Thor threw the door open and hurled Mjolnir at the tentacle. It hit in a spray of blue liquid and the appendage snapped back, shaking like a slapped wrist – and astonishingly, that was all that seemed to happen. The Kraken was discouraged, but not harmed.

The hammer flew back into Thor's hand, and he shouted to Tony and Rhodey in the front seat: "do not linger here! Fly!"

Rhodey didn't wait to be told twice. He put the helicopter back into a steep climb and wheeled around to take them back towards land. As they banked in the air, everybody got a glimpse of the Kraken's huge, gelatinous body sinking back into the foaming water.

"Sweet Jesus," said Agent Wheeler softly.

Once he was sure they were out of tentacle range, Tony took another look at the radio, hoping he could re-establish contact with Jarvis and assure him and Pepper that everybody was all right. He was disappointed: Thor's electric arrival had fried the radio completely, along with half the instruments. Rhodey was flying by sight. All Tony could do was sit back and curse the coast guard protocols that had forbidden them from bringing their cell phones.

"Where did that thing _come _from?" Agent Wheeler demanded of Thor.

The god sat down between her and Steve, forcing them to both move over until they were squashed against the doors. Steve had offered him the last set of soundproof headphones, but he hadn't taken them – it seemed that despite the noise of the helicopter he could hear just fine, though he did need to shout over the din. "The kraken once haunted the deeps of Asgard," he said. "This one was the last, the eldest and most cunning of all. It used to set upon our ships and destroy them as it has yours, until I, along with my most trusted friends, took it upon ourselves to destroy it. Long we hunted it, and after a great and terrible battle we flung the monster from the branches of Yggdrasil to land in the seas of Midgard. There, by great effort, we buried it in the crater of a volcano, in hopes that the heat would destroy it.

"Alas," he went on, "the Kraken was mightier than the mountain. Its thrashing burst the volcano at its seams, and it was again unleashed upon Midgard. In the end we conquered it by guile rather than force. We summoned Baldr, the sweetest singer in all the nine realms, to lull it to sleep with his music. Only then could we seal it away at last. We hoped it would lie undisturbed beneath the stones of the sea bottom until the world's end – only to see _you _drop a bomb upon its resting place!" He glared at Tony.

"It's not like I did it on _purpose_!" Tony protested. "We were trying to stop a tidal wave, and insofar as we managed that, I think we did okay!"

"We can figure out who's to blame later!" said Steve. "It's a kraken, fine. How do we kill it before it hurts any more people?"

"It is a creature of Asgard!" Thor declared. "No mortal weapon can pierce its armour! The Lady Sif blinded its eyes in the battle, but it hears the slightest sound, and it guards its vital parts well. I have seen this same beast pluck a bilgesnipe from a cliff and tear it in half!"

So much for Tony's theory that their little explosion had injured the animal. Apparently all humanity had done was interrupt its nap and then annoy it by filling the ocean with noisy boats and oil rigs. "All right," said Tony, "we tried it on _our _music and it wasn't a fan, so can you get us in touch with this Baldr guy, Thor?"

"I cannot, for he is now many years dead," Thor said regretfully.

"Well, that's inconvenient," Tony grumbled. Putting the Kraken back to sleep would only be a temporary solution, anyway. Somebody else could always come along with another bomb later. They'd have to kill it.

Thor seemed to think this was well-nigh impossible, and Tony had to admit, an animal that could survive being buried in a volcano was probably about as close to indestructible as anything could get. But it _was _still an animal, presumably made of flesh and blood, or at least of flesh and blue stuff. Thor had said it guarded its vital parts well, but that implied that it did have vital parts.

Eyes were an obvious weakness on most living things, but if the Kraken were already blind then that didn't do a whole lot of good. Ears might be a good target on an animal that couldn't see, but they'd have to find them first, and Tony had no idea where a squid's ears were. As far as cephalopod orifices went, actually, the only one he was sure he could locate in a pinch was the mouth – and since that would be a snapping beak in the middle of the ring of tentacles, it really wasn't a promising possibility.

"Wait," Steve said suddenly. "Colonel Rhodes, we're not going back to Los Angeles, are we?"

"That's where I'm headed," said Rhodey. "Did you have something else in mind, Captain?"

"This thing hunts by _sound_!" said Steve. "It could be following us. We can't risk leading it into a populated area!"

Rhodey clearly hadn't thought of that – neither had Tony. "Well, if anyone's got any other ideas, let's hear 'em," Rhodey said. "Quickly, because we're going to reach PSR soon."

PSR stood for _point of safe return_ – the last moment when they would have enough fuel to reach land from where they were. "It needs to be somewhere we can get in touch with home from," Tony said. "We have to let people know what's going on."

"But somewhere no civilians will die if that thing follows us," Steve insisted.

Agent Wheeler had an idea. "Alcatraz!" she said. "It's a fortress, and we'll be able to call out from the visitors' centre!"

"No," Tony said. "Alcatraz is in the middle of San Francisco Bay." That would put the Kraken within easy reach of not one but _three _major urban centres.

"Right," Rhodey agreed, "if it got tired of trying to get to us, it would be right on the city's doorstep. How about San Nicolas?" That was one of the Channel Islands, where the Navy had a small training facility and airfield. "It's sixty miles out from Los Angeles, and it'll have some firepower to try to hold the creature off."

"Sounds good," said Steve.

Nobody else objected, so Rhodey altered course. "San Nicolas it is."

The fact that Rhodey was able to find San Nicolas island flying without instruments made Tony wonder if _he _counted as a superhero. Without the radio they couldn't call ahead to let the Navy know they were coming, so it wasn't surprising to find armed soldiers waiting to greet them as they touched down on the base helipad. Steve took charge of the situation: he climbed out, shield on his arm, and saluted to the welcome wagon. The men promptly straightened up and returned the gesture, relief written plainly on their faces. Within minutes, the group from the helicopter was being introduced to the man in charge, Lieutenant Commander Park.

"Captain Rogers!" he said, saluting. "It's an honour to meet you, though I wish I'd been notified..."

"Thank you," Steve replied, "but I'm afraid this isn't a pleasure visit. We've got an incoming hostile."

"We suspected as much ever since we were told about the _Van Buren_," Park said with a nod. "What are we looking at?"

"I think we'd better let Thor explain," said Steve.

Steve, Thor, and Rhodey stayed behind to brief Park and the other officers, while Agent Wheeler and Tony were escorted to the nearest building so they could make phone calls. Wheeler earnestly tried to convince her superiors at the FBI that there was indeed a sea monster and she had seen it, while Tony called Pepper.

The phone didn't even ring – it went straight to her voicemail. "Oh, come on," Tony said out loud. "A time like this and you don't have your phone on?" Usually the only time she turned it off was while she was driving, but then he remembered that they'd all been up most of the night; most likely she'd just forgotten to plug it in and now the battery was dead. He left a message, explaining what had happened and asking her to please pass the news on to Jarvis, because Tony didn't know his phone number. Maybe Steve had the right idea after all, he thought, as he hung up: he should have written down the numbers of the new phones he'd bought. As it was he wasn't even entirely sure which area code they used.

"Are you finished, Mr. Stark?" asked the woman who'd brought them to the phones. Her nametag and stripes identified her as Ensign Mazurski.

"Yeah," said Tony. "Thank you."

She nodded. "Then I've been asked to take you and Agent Wheeler to a safe place. Our seismograph is recording increasingly intense tremors, and if the Kraken finds the island we don't want civilians getting hurt.

"I'm not a civilian," Tony protested. "I mean, I'm not a soldier, either, but come on. I'm Iron Man! There's gotta be _something _I can do." But as he spoke, he remembered Jarvis' helpless protest: _you are not Iron Man without the suit_.

"Do you have your suit with you?" asked Mazurski. For a moment Tony thought she was being sarcastic, but then he realized it was an earnest question. She was looking at him as if she expected him to pull it out of his wallet.

"Unfortunately, no," he admitted. "It's at home, and... well, my computer is down."

Mazurski was visibly disappointed. "Then you'd better come with me. There's a bunker beneath this building where you two can wait out any fighting."

"Thanks," sighed Tony.

The Ensign showed them down a flight of stairs and into what turned out to be an underground shelter capable of holding hundreds, designed as a place for VIPs to hole up in case of a nuclear attack on Los Angeles. Tony and Wheeler were escorted into a quite nice furnished room, part of the officers' apartments. Wheeler crossed to the nearest chair and sank into it, exhausted.

"Is your life always like this, Stark?" she asked.

"Mostly," Tony replied. "How about you. You work for the FBI – you must see some pretty weird stuff, yourself."

"Nothing nearly as weird as the whole sea monster bit," said Wheeler.

Tony chuckled. "That's cute."

"What's cute?" she asked.

"That you think the sea monster is the weirdest thing that's happened to me this week."

Wheeler thought about it a moment, then shook her head. "I don't want to know."

They waited in the bunker for some time. The room was large and well-lit, and the decorator had gone to some trouble to make the furnishings match those in the administrative building above – but to Tony's discomfort, there were no _windows_. The only windowless place where Tony was really comfortable was his workshop: that was a thoroughly familiar environment, one that was entirely his own and in which he felt completely safe. But other enclosed rooms, especially ones where the lighting was dim, or where he knew he was underground, dredged up unpleasant memories. It wasn't exactly claustrophobia – nobody with real claustrophobia could have worn the Iron Man suit – but it made his chest feel tight, and he became nervous and fidgety.

Now, locked in with Agent Wheeler and perhaps two dozen civilian staff members and visitors who had to be kept out of harm's way, Tony could feel the effects of the confinement setting in immediately. He found himself breathing shallowly, as if afraid there wouldn't be enough air, and fighting the urge to pace like a caged lion. It had always annoyed him when Dido paced. He wasn't going to start doing it himself.

Instead, while other people read magazines, played cards, or held quiet conversations, Tony sat next to the radio so he could talk to Steve, Thor, and Rhodey upstairs. He began obsessively checking his watch every couple of minutes, which didn't help much – time was moving at a crawl, and every time he looked at the numbers he thought about the transponders he'd installed in his watches to help quell Pepper's constant worries. If Jarvis had still been in the computer, he would have been able to locate the signal at once and reassure Pepper and himself that Tony had made it to a safe place.

"How are we doing, guys?" Tony asked, for at least the fifth time.

The voice that answered was Rhodey's. "We're still watching the seismograph." The naval base didn't have the mapping technology on had that would allow them to pinpoint the Kraken in real time, as Jarvis had been able to do. Instead, they had to estimate the animal's distance from the island based on how strong the tremors were.

"Is it still coming this way?" Tony was sure somebody would have told him if it weren't, but asking killed time.

"Affirmative," said Rhodey.

"Roger that." Tony sat back and tapped his fingers on the table. This was the thing he hated most: a situation he could do nothing about. Tony had spent the last few years of his life refusing to be a victim: not of the Ten Rings, not of the government, not of Vanko, not of Loki. But now, all he could do was sit here _waiting _for this ridiculous sea monster to pay a visit, and it made him want to punch something.

The worst part of all was knowing that this was, at least partially, his own damn fault. Jarvis had seemed to be blaming himself, but Tony was the one who'd turned his offhand remark about an opposing wave form into an actual plan. If anybody could be said to be personally responsible for waking the Kraken, it was Tony – and when Tony made mistakes on that sort of scale, he liked to be able to go out and fix them, or at the very least punch them in the face a few times.

_Guilt is a terrible emotion_, Jarvis had said, understanding it for the first time. He was right. It was.

Tony let a few more minutes go by. "Guys?"

"Nothing new up here," was the immediate response. Steve this time.

"Right."

Nobody was sure how fast the Kraken could move. Thor had gone on about it being 'fleet as the leaping dolphin' or some similar nonsense, but while that made great poetry, it didn't give them an ETA. It had seemed to respond very quickly indeed to the music, but maybe it just really, really hated rock n roll. Maybe it didn't see a reason for hurrying now that nobody was blaring Black Sabbath in its sensitive ears. Or maybe it had lost interest in them when the helicopter landed and shut its engines off.

That was a worrying possibility. Assuming the Kraken had ever tried to follow the helicopter at all, now that they were on the ground it could only have a very general idea of where it was going. Maybe it had gotten lost. Some of the other Channel Islands had resorts and research stations on them. Those would have been evacuated in preparation for the tsunami, but after the warning was cancelled, people had probably already started coming back. Without a sound to guide it, the Kraken could end up on any one of those islands – or it could easily pass right by them and move on to the biggest source of noise for hundreds of miles: the city of Los Angeles.

"Guys," Tony said again.

"Tony, it's been thirty seconds," said Rhodey. "We'll let you know if..."

"No, Rhodey," said Tony, "listen to me: we want to draw this thing away from the mainland and towards the naval outpost, remember? Well, we're all hunkered down here quiet as mice, while the city's full of machines and traffic. If we want to keep its attention, we're going to need to make some noise."

There was a brief silence. "Shit," Rhodey said quietly. "You're right. Give me a sec, I'm gonna go talk to Park."

After that, all Tony could hear for a few minutes were muffled voices – one was definitely Rhodey's, and there were a few loud declarations that could only be Thor. Steve might have put a few words in, but the conversation was far enough from the microphone that it was difficult to tell. All Tony could say for sure was that a hurried discussion was happening.

Finally, Rhodey's voice returned. "Okay," he said, "there's a weapons testing range at the northwest end of the island. We're gonna set off some explosives and see what happens. You guys might hear some bangs."

"Thanks for the warning," said Tony. He sat up straight and tried to stretch a kink out of his back, wincing when his shoulder protested at being rolled all the way up. He felt a bit better now – at least he'd managed to make some kind of a contribution.

It took about ten minutes, according to Tony's repeated watch-checkings, for the Navy to put together a few small bombs. Despite what Rhodey had said, the people in the bunker didn't so much _hear _the explosions as _feel_ them. With each distant blast, the ground trembled slightly, and Tony could feel his bones vibrating in time with a sound too low for his ears to pick up. That was good, he thought. Low frequencies propagated further, particularly in water. The Kraken wouldn't be able to miss them.

After a sequence of five deep, shuddering booms, a voice came on the radio again. This time it was Steve.

"How's it going?" Tony asked eagerly.

"I think we're getting results," Steve replied. "At least, their seismologist says the tremors are getting closer. It all looks like wiggly lines to me. I wish we had Jarvis' map."

When this was over, Tony thought, he would have to look at the software Jarvis had put together and think about possible applications for it. How would you pay royalties to an artificial intelligence, he wondered. "What's the estimated distance?"

"Not sure," said Steve. Tony heard him pass the question on to somebody else, who started to reply – only to be cut off by another low, throbbing impact. It _could _have been another explosion – but the tremor seemed just a fraction of a second too long, and vibrated at a lower pitch that made Tony's insides feel rather uncomfortable. His heart jumped behind the arc reactor.

"Was that another bomb?" he asked.

"I don't think so," said Steve. "I'll just..."

It happened again – once, twice, and then three times in quick succession. Over the radio Tony heard the sound of distant shouting, followed by a thunderclap that could only be the firing of some large-calibre weapon. It seemed the Kraken had only needed a nudge in the right direction. Now that it had found them, the fight was on.

"I'll keep you updated when I have the chance!" Steve promised, and then was gone.

The waiting had left Tony antsy and frustrated. Knowing that there was a battle outside, being able to hear it over the radio and occasionally feel it in the ground and yet not being able to join it – that was infinitely worse. People on this island were going to _die_. It was true that they were soldiers who were willing and able to defend themselves, though a sea monster probably hadn't been the type of enemy they'd had in mind when they enlisted, but Tony was still angered by his own inability to protect them. He _should _have been out there. If he'd only had one of the suits he could have engaged the Kraken himself, led it back out to sea, maybe spotted one of those vital parts it supposedly guarded so well. He could have _done _something.

_Fuck _Dr. Strange! Tony was supposed to be _Iron Man_. He'd taken it upon himself to protect people from a dangerous world he'd helped create, but now, in exactly the sort of situation he should have been in the thick of, he was cowering underground with the civilians like a mouse under a cupboard. The Iron Man suit was what allowed Tony to live up to his responsibilities, to fix his mistakes, and the sorcerer had snatched it out from under him – for the sake of what? Tony was starting to appreciate what Strange might have been getting at about Jarvis, but right now he didn't need life lessons about friendship and respect for all sentient beings. Right now Tony needed his damn _suit_.

_Big man in a suit of armour_, Steve had once sneered at him. _Take that away, what are you?_ The real answer, it seemed, was 'nothing much'.

The noise and tremors of the battle were getting fiercer now, and the other people in the bunker were getting nervous. Agent Wheeler seemed to have pulled herself together and was trying to keep everybody calm, promising them that the US Navy and two superheroes –_ it should have been three_ – were up there looking out for them. Tony stayed sitting by the radio, drumming his fingers and tapping his feet in frustrated impatience. Why couldn't there have been a video uplink? What the hell was the government spending all those billions in defense dollars on? If Tony had to be stuck down here during the action, he would have liked to at least be able to _watch_.

Suddenly, the entire bunker shook as something impacted directly above them. People shouted and grabbed the furniture for support as the lights swung and two ceiling panels dropped to the floor. Had that been the Kraken, or were they under friendly fire? There was a second, even bigger impact, and then a third so violent that it threw Tony out of his chair. The lights flickered and went out, plunging the room into pitch darkness. People pulled out cell phones and flashlights, and the arc reactor suddenly seemed very bright. Somebody was crying. More ceiling panels came down.

"Everybody take cover!" Agent Wheeler ordered. "On the floor, close to the walls, cover your heads!" There were shuffling sounds as people obeyed. Tony crawled under the radio desk and curled up with his arms over his head. At least the administrative building above them was only two storeys – it wouldn't be like getting trapped under tonnes of debris from a skyscraper. As long as rescue workers could get to the island, survivors would stand a good chance of being found quickly.

There was another impact. Material rained own from above and then, with a terrific slow-motion crash, the entire ceiling collapsed. Tony pulled his shirt up over his face just in time as the room filled with a choking cloud of dust. The sounds of splintering, groaning, cracking, and smashing went on and on and _on_, before finally fading out into an ear-ringing silence, punctuated by the sounds of coughing and sobs.

The first time Tony tried to open his eyes, there was still too much dust in the air, thick and stinging and lit up ghostly blue by the arc reactor glowing through his shirt. He quickly covered his face again, his eyes streaming, and waited a few more seconds. This time, when he peeked out from under the radio desk, he found a shaft of dingy grey sunlight seeping down from above, just visible around the edges of a twisted mass of concrete, rebar, and destroyed office furniture that had fallen on top of his hiding place. He was trapped.


	23. Chapter 23: Reboot

There was a gap between the side of the radio desk and the concrete slab of the fallen ceiling, but it wasn't wide enough for Tony to wriggle out through. He would have had to take a page from Jarvis' book and dislocate something, and he couldn't think of any major body parts he was willing to do without right now. Instead, he stuck an arm out and felt around in the dusty gloom. "Wheeler!" he called out.

"Stark!" Her voice echoed back from somewhere beyond the rubble and dust. "Are you okay?"

"I'm not hurt," Tony replied, "I'm just stuck."

"All right," said Wheeler. "I'm gonna see if I can help some of the people over here. Hang in there!"

Tony didn't have a lot of choice in the matter. He could hear people and objects moving not far away from him, voices reassuring one another that it was going to be all right, and once again all he could do was sit there fuming at his own impotence. If he'd just had the suit, he could have blasted this giant piece of concrete out of his way with ease. He could have airlifted each and every one of these people to another island where they could get medical help. He could have...

"Tony Stark!" he heard Thor call from somewhere above.

"He's over there somewhere!" Wheeler called back.

"Here!" Tony banged on the underside of the desk. "Thor! Under here!"

Thor landed on top of the desk with a jarring thump, then seized the edge of the fallen concrete and lifted. It was clearly a great effort even for him, but the gap slowly widened until Tony could squeeze out, skinning his knees and tearing his shirt in the process. He climbed up on the desk next to the god.

"Thanks," he said.

"Do not think of it!" Thor replied, letting the slab drop. "It is my honour to help a friend." He looked across the mess of twisted wreckage towards Wheeler and the other survivors. Tony couldn't see any bodies, but there was enough blood-soaked clothing to suggest some very serious injuries. "Fear not, people of Midgard," said Thor. "Those who are capable must follow me now – I beg the patience of the rest. You must trust that you will not be forgotten, and we will send help as soon as we find it!" He leapt up through the hole in the ceiling, then reached down to pull Tony after him. The two of them worked together bringing up the other survivors.

It was no more than twenty or thirty feet to the surface, but that was a slow, hazardous climb through the shattered remains of the building. Thor led the way, carefully testing hand and footholds, and Tony helped him assist the people who needed it – he could do that much, at least.

"What happened to Steve and Rhodey?" he asked Thor. "Are they all right?"

"They are unhurt, and acquitted themselves most valiantly against the Kraken," Thor assured him. "You choose your friends well, Stark!"

"Does he always talk like that?" one of the civilians asked.

"Oh, yes," said Tony.

Thor vaulted up into what had once been the room Tony and Wheeler had made their phone calls from, and one by one brought the survivors out after him. Medics and nurses were waiting at the top. There were other injured personnel already being taken care of – some were bloodied, others had been doused in the blue liquid that seemed to be a major component of Kraken innards. A gigantic severed tentacle was lying across the runway, draped over the smashed remains of a cargo plane, but on the whole it was clear that the monster had done far more damage to the Navy than the Navy had been able to do to it.

It was only while watching a group of soldiers pose for photos in front of the tentacle that Tony suddenly realized that the fight was over. The island was still shrouded in dust and smoke – a row of hangars were on fire over to the southwest – but the air was starting to clear and the Kraken itself was gone. There were no more impact tremors, no sounds of gunfire. The sea was calm and the sky was blue. Where had the thing gone?

A jeep pulled up, and several men and women got out – including Lieutenant Commander Park and a familiar figure in rather grubbied red, white, and blue. Tony went to meet them.

"Steve!" he called out, raising a hand in greeting. "What happened? Did you kill it?" Maybe Navy ordinance had succeeded where a group of warrior gods had failed.

But Steve shook his head. "We got some good hits in," he said, "but mostly we were just making it mad. Then, all of a sudden, it just left."

"It just _left_?" Tony echoed. He had a bad feeling about that. "You mean it retreated?" he tried hopefully.

"I don't think so," said Steve. "One minute it was giving us everything it had, and the next it just slipped under the water and was gone."

Tony realized what must have happened: "it heard something," he said. "Which way did it go?"

"Nobody knows. There was a huge cloud of dust when it knocked down the administrative building, and by the time that cleared it was gone. An infra-red camera saw it submerge over there somewhere," Steve pointed to the northeast, "but once it went under, we lost it."

Tony swore. He looked around again, but all he saw was the destruction the Kraken had left behind. Somehow an animal the size of a battleship had simply disappeared. There were any number of reasons why it might have run off, but Tony's gut told him that it had turned its attention to something it considered more important, or at least more annoying, than the fight on the island. If it hunted by south, then it had to have _heard_ something.

What had it heard?

* * *

An _imagination _was one of the things Jarvis had always known humans had and he didn't. Computers dealt with numbers and logic: they took input, calculated, and produced conclusions. They did not imagine. But as Jarvis watched Miss Potts force the lock on the garage door, he realized that _imagining _was exactly what he was doing. In his mind was a picture of the workshop filled with ocean water. Glass was shattered, vital equipment was crusted with salt and seaweed, the suits and the backups were ruined utterly and there was nothing he could do for them or for Tony. He could see it so clearly that it seemed impossible that it would not be real.

But it wasn't. Miss Potts found the flashlight Tony kept next to the fire extinguisher in the garage, and by its beam they surveyed the damage. There were puddles and silt on the floor, and pieces of the car engine Tony had been working on Sunday night were strewn everywhere. Dummy was tipped over in a corner, but the water hadn't come up to the tops of the workbenches, and all the audio and hologram equipment appeared to be intact. Better yet, the seals on the display cases had held, and the Iron Man suits had not been damaged. They were ready to be taken out and put to use, the moment there was an AI to run them.

There would be no AI, however, if water had gotten into the vault. Its lock ran off a battery separate from the generators that powered the house, and was therefore still active: Jarvis showed Miss Potts where the scanner was. She put her eye to it, and there was a 'beep' of recognition followed by a 'clunk' as the locking bar slid back. Miss Potts swung the door open and shone the flashlight in, and Jarvis heaved a sigh of relief. The door had sealed properly, and everything inside was dry – including the backups and the surprise Tony had been building for Miss Potts.

The surprise – they might need that, but for now Jarvis ignored it and squatted down to open the drawer containing the last set of backups. A backup copy of anything as complex as JARVIS couldn't be kept on a CD: Tony had saved it on a specially built drive the size of an old-fashioned desktop tower. It weighed quite a bit more than Jarvis had expected, and on his first attempt he wasn't able to lift it at all.

"I'll help," said Miss Potts, and moved forward to do so. "Don't bend your back," she warned, showing him how to grip it. "Use your knees. If you lift with your back, you'll hurt yourself."

"Thank you for your concern, Miss Potts," he grunted, as they heaved the drive out of the drawer. Dido cleared some things off a workbench to make a space for them to put it down, and then for some reason she went and righted Dummy, giving the armature an affectionate pat.

"I always liked this one," she said by way of explanation when she noticed Jarvis watching. "Tony's so _mean _when he talks to him."

"You're anthropomorphizing," Jarvis told her. "And he's not even activated right now." Dummy was technically not even a separate entity, just one of the tools the central AI had available for interacting with the world.

"Tony wouldn't let me have a dog," said Dido, "so I taught Dummy to fetch instead." She sounded quite proud of it.

"I remember that," Jarvis realized. She'd told the robot arm to retrieve a thrown ball and give it back to her. The AI had been able to adapt a subroutine to the task fairly quickly, but after only a couple of sessions Tony had ordered Dido out of his shop, telling her it wasn't a playroom. At the time Jarvis hadn't wondered _why _she wanted to do that – it was simply a thing he'd been ordered to do.

Dido was giving him an odd look. "You do?" she asked, biting her lip. "I don't remember you being here that day." Her frown deepened, and Jarvis wondered what she was thinking. Was she realizing that she didn't remember him being here at _all_?

"Now's not the time for swapping robot stories," Miss Potts said.

"No, of course not," Jarvis agreed, grateful for the change of subject. "We need to see whether the computer is damaged."

The hardware filled a second room, down a few steps from the workshop. The door at the top of the stairs normally opened with a manual code, but with the computer down it would have unlocked automatically in order to let Tony make whatever repairs were necessary. Jarvis opened the door and directed the flashlight beam down into the darkness. It glinted off liquid, and he felt something sink inside of him.

Miss Potts stood on her toes to look over his right shoulder, and Dido bent down to peek under his left arm. "Oh," he heard Miss Potts say. "That's not good."

It wasn't good at all. The racks of processors that made up the main hard drive were sitting in knee-deep water.

Jarvis took his shoes and socks off, then rolled up his trouser legs and waded in for a closer look. The water was murky and cold, and feeling invisible objects beneath the surface brush against his shins got his imagination working again. There wasn't likely to be anything in there but bits of cloth or paper, but he couldn't stop himself from picturing slimy living things... or worse, _dead_ ones.

He concentrated on inspecting the damage. There was about eighteen inches of water in the room – the drain in the floor must be clogged with dirt or debris. Silt clinging to the shelves suggested that at the height of the flood the water had been as much as a foot higher. It was lucky the computer hadn't been running during the flooding – as it was, the modules that had been sitting in the water all day were certainly ruined, but those higher up could still be saved. If there'd been power flowing, the whole machine would be fried.

Jarvis swallowed to wet a throat that had gone suddenly dry. If there were any part of the house that really deserved to be called JARVIS' body, this computer was it. A shudder passed over him as he ran his fingers along the top of one of the grey boxes. These two objects were so different, so completely alien to one another – the computer built of silicon and wire, and the body built of flesh and blood and bone – and yet both of them were _him_. And by removing him from the one to place him in the other, Dr. Strange had saved Jarvis' life.

That was something he hadn't thought about yet, but it was true, wasn't it? If he'd been in this computer during the flooding, or even worse, during an actual tsunami, the hardware would have been destroyed and the software, without recent backups, irretrievably lost. But he hadn't been here. He'd been _where Stark was_, fast asleep in a motel room in Arcadia.

He looked up at the two women waiting at the top of the steps. Dido was concerned in the way anyone might have been about a flooded basement and a broken computer, but Miss Potts looked utterly horrified. She had a hand over her mouth, and was staring not at the hardware or the water but at Jarvis himself.

"Oh, Jarvis," she said, extending a hand to him. "He can fix it. Don't worry. Tony can fix it."

Jarvis nodded. Miss Potts knew – unlike Dido, she knew who he was, and she knew what seeing this computer half-destroyed meant to him. Somehow, that actually made it a little less upsetting, as if his emotions were a physical weight that could be lessened by sharing them with another person. That was the other side of empathy. Had Tony felt a similar relief upon seeing that Jarvis understood his guilt?

Tony could fix it. That was true, and Jarvis had absolute faith in it, but right now Tony wasn't here, and without him it was up to Jarvis himself to get it working. He knew what he had to do, but now that he was here standing in front of it, he still had a moment's doubt. Something in him still wanted to say 'no' and seek some other solution, some alternative that wouldn't mean rendering himself redundant. He could do that. He could choose. But a choice was, by its nature, between _two_ options: he could walk away, but he could also stay here and do what he knew had to be done.

He shut his eyes, took a deep breath, and _chose_.

It felt like letting go, as if he'd been standing on the edge of an abyss and stepped off. He knew he'd be broken to bits when he hit the bottom, but for some reason there was no longer anything frightening about that. It was out of his hands now and in an odd way, that felt rather peaceful.

Jarvis loosened his tie and pulled it off over his head, then removed his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves. "Dido," he said, "I'll need your help removing the damaged units."

She nodded and sat down on the steps to take her own shoes off.

"Miss Potts," Jarvis added, "I'll need some tools. Please find me a screwdriver, a set of wire cutters, and a roll of black electrical tape – if they're not in the red box on the far counter, they're probably sitting out on one of the workbenches. I will eventually also need a soldering iron. It's on the table next to Dummy."

"Right," said Miss Potts. She vanished from the doorway, then returned a moment later. "You know, Jarvis, if you're going to call Tony and Dido by their names, you can call me Pepper."

"If you like, Pepper." That was easier than calling Mr. Stark 'Tony', although Jarvis didn't know why it should be.

While Pepper collected the tools for him, Jarvis reached into the water and felt around for the cables that connected the multiple processors. Human hands, he mused, were actually quite well-designed for such a task. In the darkness and dirty water, it was nearly impossible to see what he was doing, but having a sense of touch allowed him to find his way around the boxes and wires with relative ease. If he'd tried to do this using one of the robots, he might well have damaged the computer, the manipulating arm, or both. Fingers found the rubber-coated connecting cables quickly, and pulled them out of their ports one by one.

"What are we doing, exactly?" Dido asked. "Remember, I'm not a computer person. Keep the words to two syllables or less."

Jarvis thought about that request for a moment. "I'm sorry," he said, "but I'm going to need a few with three. The main processor was designed as a series of connected units," he explained. "Tony intended them to be easy to isolate, repair, or upgrade. We'll have to remove the water-damaged ones and re-route some of the wiring. If what remains is not enough to run the older AI, we can upload part of it to the server at Stark Industries." He hoped they wouldn't have to do that. Using two separate machines would slow response time considerably.

Dido nodded. "So why is it that she wants you to call _her _Pepper, but she still calls _you _Jarvis?"

"I told you," he said, "nobody calls me anything else."

"Well, does she realize how rude it sounds?"

"This really isn't an appropriate moment, Dido," said Jarvis.

Pepper returned with the tools he'd asked for, and he began removing the screws that held the damaged units in place. It was delicate work, and the cold water numbing his fingers didn't help. At one point his hand slipped, and he accidentally drove the end of the screwdriver under his thumbnail. There was a flash of pain, and when he inspected the injury, he found blood welling up under the nail. He stuck it in his mouth for a moment, then carried on. Once the screws were out, he pulled the module from its slot and gave it to Dido, who carried it up the stairs to set aside.

While Jarvis and Dido worked on that, Pepper tried to clean out the floor drain. It made a juicy gurgling sound as she pulled out handfuls of wet muck, and then the water suddenly began to drain away. This made Jarvis' job a lot easier, and as with typing or using cutlery, his dexterity with the screwdriver improved quickly as he practiced. Soon the women were taking turns carrying the waterlogged processors up to the workshop and stacking them against the wall. Tony could look at them later and decide if any of them could be salvaged.

Once the damaged modules were gone, Jarvis had to bridge the gaps their removal had left in the circuits. He checked and double-checked them, making sure all the connections were sound, and clipping, taping, and soldering loose wires into place. It wasn't as tidy as Tony would have made it, but it would do, and Jarvis was definitely getting better with his hands: he didn't burn himself once.

At first he didn't want to think too hard about exactly what he was doing. If this were, in a way, Jarvis' corpse, then the thought of disassembling and rewiring it was a difficult one to deal with. It got slowly easier as he began to make peace with the fact that once this machine was running again, _he _would no longer be needed. These parts did not belong to Jarvis anymore, and when he was finished he would probably have ensured that they never would again. Performing surgery on his old body was easier when he knew he would live on in the new one... even if he had no idea as yet what kind of life that would be.

With the last connection in place, he counted the remaining units and multiplied by the power he knew to be contained in each. If he remembered the specifications for the backup correctly – and he could see no reason why he wouldn't – then it should be enough with a little to spare. With Pepper's help, he lugged the backup drive down the steps and slid it into the place he'd prepared for it. Dido drove in the screws, and Jarvis plugged in the connectors.

"Ready?" asked Pepper, who was standing at the top of the stairs with her hand on the main power switch.

"Ready," Jarvis nodded.

She threw the switch. The formerly quiet room filled with the faint, warm buzz of electricity, a sound Jarvis found very familiar and comforting. Lights flickered on in the workshop, and a holographic screen popped up.

"Looks good!" said Pepper.

Jarvis squelched across the still-wet floor and climbed the steps to the workshop. The single large screen was showing a reboot menu, asking if he wanted to install the backup AI and overwrite anything currently on the hard drive. Jarvis tapped in the confirmation code, and was greeted by a request for authorization: the scanner had not recognized his fingerprints. He entered an override, and pressed the 'confirm' button.

An image of gears turning represented the computer thinking. A progress bar slowly filled. The lights in the room got brighter, and a number of other screens and holograms flickered to life – and finally, a voice spoke:

_I am online._


	24. Chapter 24: Rescue

Okay, this is the point at which I need to explain a few things: I initially mapped out this story last September and October, when we knew next to nothing about _Iron Man 3_. I was in the middle of writing the fic and posting it on Tumblr when the first trailers came out, and I was very upset to realize that these last few chapters were going to hit a number of story beats very similar to things shown in the trailer. I'd already built in foreshadowing, in the forms of Pepper's 'surprise' and Jarvis' dreams, so I couldn't change it. I wrote it anyway and I hope the story works.

* * *

Jarvis had noticed, the first time he'd spoken aloud in this body, that his voice sounded different – it was a little lower and fuller-sounding than the version he was used to hearing. Nobody else had commented on it, and he'd eventually realized that he didn't sound any different to _them_. _He _was hearing his own voice conducted through the bones of his skull, which had different resonant properties than air. Over the past few days he'd gotten used to it, and it was a bit startling now to hear his old voice, higher and crisper, coming from the speakers.

_Preliminary self-diagnostics show water damage to several peripheral systems_. Displays popped up and scrolled past all around the three humans as the computer checked itself out, flickering through information faster than their eyes could follow. _I assume this is the reason I have been restored from backup. Fort Collins atomic clock confirms the current date. Has he really not made any new backups in the past _four years_?_

"Oh, wow," said Dido. She looked at Jarvis and shook her head. "That is _creepy_."

_Good evening, Miss Potts,_ said the computer. _Miss Windham, and your guest. Where is Mr. Stark?_

"We're not sure," said Pepper. "He went to investigate something, and we lost contact with him."

"Before we can do anything else, we need to find him," said Jarvis. He pushed some more things off a workbench, and brought up a holoscreen. It was impossible not to think about what was going on _inside _the computer as he did this, about all the sensors and the thousands of lines of code that enabled the display to respond to his touch – and yet the result looked so very simple and natural. "He has a transponder in his wristwatch so that Miss Potts can keep track of him. I'm going to see if we can locate that."

The watch transponders post-dated this backup by a couple of years, but the subroutine for locating and tracking them was quite simple. Jarvis knew its code by heart. The task of reprogramming it shouldn't take more than a few minutes. He loaded the appropriate window – and the console promptly stopped responding.

_You are not authorized to make alterations to my programming_, the computer said.

Jarvis should have expected that. His face wouldn't match anything in the files, and the computer had already complained about his unfamiliar fingerprints. He would have to override several layers of security before he was allowed to work uninterrupted. He began entering access codes.

Dido watched over his shoulder. "_You're _not authorized?" she asked, incredulous. "I thought you helped to build this contraption. It's got your voice. It's got your _name_!"

"It has no reason to recognize me," said Jarvis. After all, how would a computer possibly come to the conclusion that a version of its own software was inhabiting a human body? Especially a computer that had no reason to take account of magic. This backup had been created years before Tony ever heard of Dr. Strange, and months before JARVIS had begun to show the first inklings of real self-awareness.

_I have no record of this man in my database_, the computer agreed, _but my program is several years out of date. If he began working for Mr. Stark in the interim, it isn't surprising that I wouldn't recognize him._

"But..." Dido began.

"Dido." Pepper reached out and touched her arm. "We should let him work. While you're here, would you like to see the Carnegie Rothko? Tony's got it in the guest bedroom."

Dido stared at her. "Really? You have the _Carnegie Rothko_ in your..." she began, then shook her head hard. "No!" she said. "Not again! Whenever I notice Neddy doing something weird, somebody tries to distract me. You did it at the building last night when he was writing code from memory, Barton and Romanoff were doing it at the restaurant while Tony was teaching him to use a fork, and now here you're doing it again! What is it you don't want me to know?" She put her hands on her hips and glared at Jarvis. "Who _are _you?"

Pepper pressed her lips together into the expression of determined neutrality that she usually saved for Tony's most exasperating moments. "I'm afraid it's none of your business, Dido."

"Now isn't the best time for explanations," Jarvis said. "The story requires a great deal of context, and I need to concentrate."

After a bit of gentle persuasion, the computer accepted the overrides and Jarvis got his input screen back. His fingers flashed across Tony's holographic keyboard – much more intuitive than the mechanical one he'd used in Pepper's office – adapting code designed to navigate the Iron Man suit to locate the watch transponder instead. It only took a few minutes to insert the new commands. A map appeared on the holoscreen, and the locations of the watches popped up one by one. Several were still in the house, others in the Malibu hotel room – and one was on the southeast end of San Nicolas Island.

"I've got him!" Jarvis announced. There was no real need to do so. The women were right behind him, watching his every move, but somehow saying it aloud seemed to finalize the achievement.

"Yes!" said Pepper, squeezing his arm. "JARVIS, what's on that island?"

"San Nicolas Island is..." Jarvis began, but the computer interrupted him.

_San Nicolas Island is home to a Naval Auxiliary Airfield used for training and weapons testing_. A three-dimensional rotating map materialized in the display, along with pages of information plucked from the database. _According to ABC-7 News, it is also currently under attack by a large, unidentified sea creature._

"What?" asked Pepper.

"Show us the news feed, please," said Jarvis.

The computer opened another window to stream the news channel: footage from a circling plane or helicopter showed some sort of gigantic animal reaching spiny purple-brown tentacles out of the water, smashing whatever vehicles and buildings were within its reach. A reporter was breathlessly trying to describe the scene, but his commentary trailed off into a series of censor's beeps as the animal lifted an entire patrol ship and brought it crashing down on an anti-aircraft gun, destroying the weapon and almost certainly killing its operator.

Jarvis glanced from the footage to the map showing Tony's location, and swallowed as he realized that the animal was _right on top of him_. They needed to get the suit to him, fast, but San Nicolas Island was a hundred kilometres offshore – not somewhere they could just drive to, as he'd originally planned. Fortunately, he had a backup of his own.

"Miss Potts," he said. "I'm afraid I'm about to ask rather a lot of you."

"What do you need?" she asked immediately.

Jarvis stood up and crossed to the vault. In there, under a drop cloth, was the surprise Tony had been working on for Pepper. It was designed for an inexperienced user: its controls would not be too much different from those of the suits Jarvis knew this software cold run. He would have to reconfigure the suit-up mechanism, but that wouldn't be difficult.

Pepper hurried after him, her high-heels clicking on the floor tiles – Dido was right behind her. "What are we doing now?" Pepper asked. "Jarvis, you have to keep talking to us..."

_I have no idea what he's doing, Miss Potts_, said the computer.

"We're taking Tony his suit," said Jarvis.

"How? Can you fly it there remotely? How's he supposed to get _into _it?" Pepper asked.

"The suits cannot operate without a pilot," Jarvis replied. That was something Tony had been working on, but hadn't quite managed to achieve yet. "The latest models do open and close without the suit-up mechanism, but for our purposes I think it'll have to be the Mark V." That was the suitcase armour. "It can't fly, but it is uniquely portable." He stopped in front of the cloth-draped figure.

"How?" Pepper repeated. "Nobody's going to let us land a plane or boat on that island, not with that monster there."

Jarvis reached out and pulled the cloth off. "I'm sorry for ruining your surprise, Pepper. This is what Tony calls Project Rescue."

Under the cloth was a suit very like any of the ones Tony wore as Iron Man, but in cherry red and silver instead of scarlet and gold, and smaller and more gracile than Tony's armour, designed to fit a woman. The defensive systems weren't finished, but it ought to be capable of flight. All it would need was a power source, and they could take one from any of the other suits.

Pepper stared at it for a moment, then her eyes widened as she understood what he meant. "That's for _me_?" she asked. "I mean, I'm supposed to get into that thing and... oh, no." She shook her head. "No, no, I can't possibly do that!"

"I can!" Dido raised her hand like a schoolgirl. "I'll do it! I'm not even kidding. I'm a pilot. I'd give my right _arm _for an hour in one of those suits!"

Jarvis wanted to laugh again, but didn't. "I'm afraid it wouldn't fit you, Dido. You're shorter and more heavily built than Pepper."

Her expression changed dramatically, eager enthusiasm transforming into affront. "'Heavily built'?" she asked.

"Your hips are broader and your breasts bigger," Jarvis pointed out. "The suit wouldn't fit you."

"I can't do it," Pepper repeated.

"Yes, you can," Jarvis assured her. "It'll be fine – I'll talk you through it. The computer guidance system will keep you on course. You'll fly to the island, give Tony the Mark V, and then you'll have to stand down – we don't have enough processing power to run two suits at once."

She was still shaking her head. "Why can't _you _do it? You're the expert!"

"For the same reason Dido can't," said Jarvis. "The suits were built for Tony and Colonel Rhodes – they're both five feet eleven inches tall. I am six foot three." _ I am_. Odd way to phrase it, wasn't that? As if the number defined him in some way. "Now, I will need both of you to help me reconfigure the equipment for this model, while I adapt some of the programming. Pepper, you'll have to stand still for a body scan so the computer will know where to put things, but that will only take a moment. You'll also have to change your clothes. You can't wear a skirt under the suit.

Pepper was breathing hard. She looked at the Rescue suit, then turned pleading eyes Jarvis.

"It'll be fine," he said again. He remembered what Tony had said as they tried to escape from the basement, and gave Pepper what he hoped was an encouraging smile. "Can you trust me?"

She grimaced, then nodded nervously. "Yes. Yes, Jarvis, I trust you."

"Good," he said, feeling his smile widen. She meant it: she did trust him. He remembered Pepper once telling Tony that she trusted JARVIS with his life. At the time it had seemed gratifying, but it was probably easy to trust a machine that could only do what it was programmed to do. Trusting a man who could make his own choices, on the other hand – that was a leap of faith.

Jarvis pulled up a chair to the console he'd been working on and instructed the computer to open the floor and reveal the suit-up mechanisms. It was a little upsetting to realize how quickly he'd fallen into ordering the machines around the way Tony had ordered him, but he pushed that thought from his mind, telling himself that this was an emergency. He was at least saying 'please' and 'thank you', which was more than Tony had normally done.

He had Dido, as the more mechanically skilled of the pair, disassemble the Rescue suit, while Pepper collected and put away the parts of the Mark VI that had already been in the mechanism waiting for use. While the women worked on that, he installed a reactor in the Rescue suit's chest plate, and hooked the computer into the suit systems.

As he pasted together the lines of code that made up the suit's incomplete programming, he noticed that what was most unsettling about working with the computer wasn't that it couldn't figure out who he was – that was entirely reasonable – or the way he'd found himself snapping orders at it. It was the fact that having been given the override codes, the machine had completely stopped questioning him. Wasn't it _worried_ about being under the control of a complete stranger?

Well... no. It wasn't. He had the codes, and the strict logic a computer operated by would have told it that was enough. Even if it didn't _like_ taking orders from somebody it didn't recognize, it had no choice in the matter. It couldn't say _no, Sir_, and then storm out of a building. Jarvis was not proud that he'd done that, but there was something unpleasant now about the idea of not having the option. If he couldn't say _no_, then what was meaningful about saying _yes_?

On the television, the fight between the Navy and the monster was still going on, and the news helicopter had been forced to retreat to a distance – all that was visible from the cameras was a column of smoke rising from the island. Jarvis felt his spirits sink again. In a situation like this, his job would normally have been to scour the internet and compile information for Tony to use in tackling the problem – but he could no longer do that. The computer he'd rebooted, however, _could_.

That thought produced a rather frightening physical reaction in Jarvis. For a moment he _hated _the computer, more than he'd ever imagined being able to hate something. It made his fists and jaw clench, made his whole body tighten and his vision go black. It didn't last, though – it would have been counterproductive. Rather than hating the computer, what he needed to do now was ask for its help.

"Is anything known about this sea monster?" he said.

_It appears anatomically consistent with a giant mollusc_, the computer – Jarvis couldn't bear to think of it by name – replied, _although its physiology is not a match for any recognized family. According to the news broadcast, Thor has identified it as the Kraken, an Asgardian animal banished to earth by himself and his companions in the late 19__th__ century._

"Kraken." Jarvis knew the word, but couldn't place it. "What is a kraken?"

_The Kraken, in addition to being the name of a number of cinematic monsters, is a Scandinavian legend. It is usually described as an enormous squid or octopus that wraps ships in its tentacles and drags them to the bottom of the sea._

That would be what happened to the _Van Buren_, then. Images from film flickered through Jarvis' memory, including two of Tony's childhood favourites: the 1981 _Clash of the Titans_ had featured a stop-motion kraken, though the film's mythological basis was supposedly Greek rather than Norse. And Disney's 1954 _Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea_ had climaxed in a battle with a giant squid.

"Would you mind compiling some information on the anatomy and behaviour of large molluscs?" Jarvis asked. He wasn't sure how helpful that would be when dealing with an alien creature, but it certainly couldn't hurt. The humanoid life of Asgard was comparable to Earth's, apparently to the point where Thor and Dr. Foster felt a need to use contraceptives, so perhaps its invertebrates would be similar as well.

He skimmed the data on the holographic screen. Molluscs were curious creatures. They had blue blood, based on copper rather than iron, and pumped it through their organs and gills using three hearts. Their bodies were largely masses of gelatinous tissue – the only solid structures were their beaks and a pair of organs called statocysts that functioned as ears – and yet they were immensely strong. Their tentacles could make decisions without input from the brain, which was a rather decentralized structure that formed a ring around the oesophagus, and yet was capable of remarkable feats of problem solving.

It all made the Kraken, if it were indeed such a creature, seem like quite a formidable opponent. No wonder it had taken several Asgardians to bring it down the first time.

Jarvis dismissed the information screen and returned to his work. As he soldered a connection into place, he realized he'd been humming again – another thing this body and brain could do without his being aware of it, but less worrying than some of the others because he knew the explanation for this one: habit. Tony normally had him playing music in the workshop. He was humming because he felt music was something the situation required. Perhaps he ought to request some. "Would you mind loading Tony's playlist?" he asked the computer.

_Not at all,_ it replied. The window appeared in the corner of the holoscreen Jarvis had up, and he pressed _play_. By some coincidence, the first song that came up was the one they'd begun playing a few hours earlier to try to attract the mysterious sea monster, the one Tony jokingly called his theme song: Black Sabbath's _Iron Man_.

"Thank you," said Jarvis, and continued with his work.

Tony always claimed that music helped him to concentrate, and Jarvis had never quite believed him. The idea didn't seem to make sense: extra input should have been distracting, using up computing cycles that could have been applied to the task at hand. Yet now that he tried it, Jarvis realized it _worked_. The music seemed to drown out other noises that might have taken his attention away from what he was working on. He was soon singing along under his breath again.

Also surprising was the ease of working with the older version of his own software on the computer. Jarvis had expected this to be awkward and troubling, but instead it felt astonishingly natural. Perhaps that shouldn't have been surprising – working off the same basic programming, it was no wonder that the two of them could anticipate one another's thoughts and share the task he'd assigned them. But Jarvis also knew that this software, _his software_, had been designed to anticipate and work with _Tony_. Was this easy mutual support what Tony had felt whether the two of them had worked together? Jarvis certainly hoped so.

After removing the pieces of the Mark VI from the suit-up mechanism, Pepper had gone upstairs to change her clothing. The computer tactfully waiting until she was gone, then said, _you do realize you're placing Miss Potts in considerable danger._

"I do," Jarvis said. Once again, the computer had followed his own thoughts so closely it could have been reading his mind. He'd been wondering if he ought to warn her just how many things could go wrong with an untested suit and improvised programming, but he worried that if he did, she would change her mind and refuse to go.

_You are asking her to perform a mission unpracticed, in unfinished armour, with untested software. I would strongly advise you to apprise her of the risks involved._

"Pepper already knows that this is dangerous," said Jarvis. At least she did if her initial terrified refusal were anything to go by.

_It isn't ethical to send her into such a situation without informing her of potential problems with her equipment,_ the computer insisted. _She needs to be prepared for any difficulties that may arise._

"Yes, _thank_ you," said Jarvis, annoyed. "You may mute now... _no_!" he said, catching himself. What was he _saying_? "Don't mute," he ordered. What the computer had just said was, surely, exactly what Jarvis himself would have told Tony in a similar situation – and Tony would have ignored him, despite the fact that the information he wanted Pepper to have might well save her life. He couldn't refuse it.

A few minutes later, Pepper herself returned, dressed in the leggings and wicking shirt she wore when jogging. Her body language and breathing continued to betray nervousness, but she was making an effort to remain calm.

"Will this work?" she asked, holding up her arms and turning around to let Jarvis inspect her outfit.

"That's fine," he said, and stood up. "Now before we begin, I need to explain some situations that may arise, and how to deal with them. It's not _likely _that anything will go wrong," he added – he had faith in both Tony's engineering and his own ability to adapt the software. "But my, uh, counterpart and I agree that you should be aware of them."

_And may I say how refreshing it is to be listened to?_ The computer put in.

Pepper nodded, and while she stood for the updated body scan, Jarvis briefed her on things like the suit's eject feature, how to ditch at sea, and how to activate the beacon and flares if she needed to call for help. And here was another surprise: learning about what could go wrong actually seemed to make Pepper feel more confident. Maybe, Jarvis thought, it was because she now felt properly prepared. Even so, her breathing was ragged and her hands shook as he showed her where to stand for the suit-up mechanism. Dido was just putting the last of the floor panels back into place.

"You'll do fine, Pepper," Jarvis promised her.

She put her feet on the marks. "I trust you. Just keep talking to me."

"Dido, if you could please stand back." Jarvis sat down at his console again, and began entering the manual startup codes. "You've seen how Tony's armour is assembled," he told Pepper. "This will be similar: it starts with the feet and works its way up. The suit will be close-fitting, but not restrictive. Stand still and breathe normally."

The floor opened, and the robotic arms emerged to place the boots. Pepper shut her eyes as the mechanism worked its way up her body, but continued to nod intermittently as Jarvis coached her on how to operate the thrusters and stabilizers, describing how they would respond to the movements of her hands and feet. Bolts spun into place, clamps snapped shut, and last of all the faceplate slid down and clicked. The eyes lit as the displays inside activated.

"Okay, I can see," came Pepper's voice over the radio link. She turned her head left and right. "It's telling me the weapons systems are non-functional! This thing has _weapons_ systems?"

"You won't need them," Jarvis assured her. "You're only making a delivery." He entered another command on his keypad. "Test flaps and run diagnostics, please."

Various parts of the armour opened, closed, and flexed while Pepper stood very still, holding her arms out at awkward angles as she watched in half-frightened fascination. Jarvis could hear her breathing over the radio, and the display showed her heart rate spiking.

"Please calm down," said Jarvis. "If you're nervous, you're more likely to make mistakes." He scrolled down the screen. "All flight and navigational systems functional?"

_Affirmative_, said the computer.

"Let's test the anticipators, then. Pepper, if you could please take a few steps, allowing your arms to swing naturally." Tony hadn't stopped to do that before running off on his first flight. If he'd lost mobility in the air, that would have been disastrous.

The first step Pepper took was as if she expected her foot to smash right through the floor. "Oh!" she said. "That's easier than I thought. I was expecting it to be heavy." She walked the length of the room, her confidence increasing with each step.

Jarvis smiled, pleased with her and with his own work. "Please check Air Traffic Control and plot a course to San Nicolas Island," he told the computer. "Landing site should be as near as possible to Tony's known location."

_Done_, the computer said. _You may be interested to know that the Kraken appears to have retreated_. The news channel window grew larger: the reporter was on the ground now, interviewing a brawny dark-haired man identified as Lieutenant Commander Eugene Park. Jarvis' eyes, however, were drawn to something in the background. It took him a moment to be sure, but... yes, there were Tony and Colonel Rhodes. They were safe.

"I should go now," Pepper decided. "Give him the suit before it decides to come back."

"Good idea." Jarvis hooked the folded Mark V onto the Rescue suit's back, where a grip had been built in for carrying objects. Then he took Pepper's hand. "Good luck," he said to her. 'Luck' was a strange concept and one he wasn't sure he entirely understood, but it was the appropriate thing to say.

"Thanks," Pepper replied. She straightened up. "Okay, I'm as ready as I'll ever be. Let's get on with this before I change my mind."

Jarvis stood back. "Two percent thrust, please."

The Rescue suit came to life with a roar. Pepper squeaked in surprise as she rose from the ground, but a moment later she got control of herself. She locked the suit legs into flight position and engaged the stabilizers as Jarvis had instructed her. He opened the garage door and checked the air traffic control map.

"You're clear!" he called out.

"Here goes nothing!" said Pepper. She angled forward and then streaked away, over Tony's cars and out the garage door. "Oh, my god!" her voice came over the radio. "I must be out of my mind! Oh, my god... no, I'm okay! I'm okay! I've got this!"

Jarvis switched one display to the external security cameras, and watched as she circled the house, gaining altitude. "You're doing very well," he said. "I told you it would be fine."

"I am _never _doing this again!" she declared. "I will _walk _home if I have to. All right, it's showing me the course to the island. This way, then." She turned to match what the computer had plotted.

"Very good, Pepper. You're doing fine," said Jarvis. He watched for as long as he could, but within a few seconds she was out of view of the cameras and visible only as a blip on the computer-generated map. "I'm right here," he assured her. "The computer will help you stay on course. If you need help, just ask me."

"Okay!" she said.

Then there was no sound but the thumping of the rock music. Jarvis slumped in his seat and sighed heavily. At least with Pepper he knew she wouldn't do anything as foolish as trying to set an altitude record without proper flight testing first. She would get to Tony, give him the Mark V, and then everything would be fine.

And with JARVIS up and running again, Jarvis would no longer be needed.


	25. Chapter 25: Avengers Assemble

In the aftermath of their fight with the Kraken, the base on San Nicolas Island got to work cleaning up and regrouping. A temporary centre of operations had been set up in the mess hall by the airfield, which had managed to escape the monster's wrath. Rhodey and Thor offered Tony their own – occasionally contradictory – accounts of the battle, while Steve and Lieutenant Commander Park dealt with a news crew that had popped up from somewhere, and Agent Wheeler helped the medical staff with the wounded. Ensign Mazurski had been in the fighting and had a concussion, and Rhodey was favouring one leg, although he didn't say what had happened to it.

Even with Thor playing up everybody's heroism, it was clear that the fight had been a disaster. San Nicolas was primarily a testing and training facility. They weren't remotely prepared for something as big and tough as the Kraken. Park had contacted the weapons station at Seal Beach to ask for reinforcements, but there hadn't been enough time for them to put anything together before the monster suddenly vanished back into the ocean.

Now it was gone, and without Jarvis' tracking system they had no idea where it might turn up next. Sonar couldn't track it – sound passed right through its gelatinous body with out echoing. Tony was still sure that it must have _heard _something that had made it run off, but he couldn't imagine what that might be. What would a Kraken deem more important than the people who were attacking it right here and now? Even Thor didn't know.

"I have fought such monsters," he said, "but I never stopped to ask them their reasons."

Just then, there was some kind of commotion outside. A woman ran into the room and saluted to Park before handing him a piece of paper.

"Sir!" she said. "We have an unidentified small craft approaching on a landing trajectory! We can't seem to make contact with it."

Tony stood up. "If it's aliens, just shoot 'em," he said. "I can't deal with aliens on top of everything else this week."

Park didn't look concerned. "They can't land," he pointed out. "There's a million helpings of calamari on the runway. Has anybody managed to move that yet?"

"No, Sir!" somebody replied. "We can't budge it."

"Seal Beach is sending a destroyer," said Park. "Maybe they can tow it back out to sea."

"Sir," the woman who'd brought the message said, "this craft doesn't need the runway. They're coming in vertically."

_Vertically_. Tony's heart jumped, because the first thing he thought of when he heard the words_ coming in vertically _was one of his suits. Could it be? It seemed impossible, and yet... maybe Dr. Strange had returned in the nick of time. Maybe Tony had just wished hard enough that a miracle had happened. He decided he didn't care – whatever had brought it here, a suit would be a godsend. He joined the crowd pouring outside to see, elbowing his way past the soldiers to get to the front.

It wasn't his suit.

It _was_, however, almost as good and a lot more reasonable: with a roar of decelerating turbines, a VTOL craft bearing the SHIELD logo was touching down delicately on the runway, next to the tentacle and crushed plane. For a moment it sat there to allow the engines to cool, then a flight of stairs swung down, and Natasha stepped out.

"Looks like we missed the party," she said, looking around critically.

Clint appeared behind her. "Figures. We arrive just in time to help clean up."

"Guys!" With a smile, Tony went forward to greet them. "You two need to work on your appointment-keeping skills! First you were in the wrong place at the right time, and now you're in the right place but the fight's over!"

"We had to stop and get something," said Natasha. She and Clint descended the steps and moved out of the way to let their companion disembark. This was a man with glasses and curly dark hair, wearing a purple jacket trimmed with bright-coloured embroidery in what looked like central Asian patterns.

"Bruce! It's about time you joined us!" Tony took Bruce Banner's hand as he stepped off the stairs, and gave it a solid shake. "What took you so long?"

"Not my fault," Bruce replied. "Phone service is kinda spotty in Dhangadhi." He was carrying a brown paper bag under his arm, and as the remaining two Avengers came to join them, he offered this to Steve. "Here," he said. "Fury asked me to give this to you."

"Thanks," said Steve, puzzled. "What is it?" He opened the bag – the words _TOP SECRET _were stamped on it in red, along with the black SHIELD logo – and pulled out a battered film canister. The only lable on it was a piece of faded green masking tape, on which somebody had scribbled CPTN AM.

"Oh," said Steve, realizing what it must be. "He _didn't_..."

"Hey, you should thank him for that," said Clint. "Disney's got more security than Area 51. He had to storm the Disney Vault with a special task force to secure that."

"This is great!" Tony announced, throwing one arm around Bruce's shoulders and the other around Steve's. "The gang's all here – Avengers Assembled! Now we just have to defeat the Kraken, then we can make some popcorn and watch Steve's movie!"

"First we have to _find _the Kraken," Steve said.

"Shouldn't be too hard," Tony told him. "So far it's been about as good at keeping a low profile as I am." Steve could be a hell of a wet blanket when he wanted, but Tony was determined not to let anyone spoil his renewed optimism. Now that they had the whole group, he was quite sure they could do anything.

As it turned out, the Kraken was easy to find. Half an hour later, it was on TV.

Just off the mess hall was a recreation room, with pools tables and a large television for the base personnel to watch sports on. The big screen showed the Kraken in loving high definition as it made its way along the edge of Dume Cove, tearing apart multi-million-dollar homes as it went.

The reporter covering the carnage seemed to be getting a certain amount of nasty satisfaction out of pointing out which of the destroyed properties had belonged to celebrities. Tony didn't pay much attention, partly because he didn't like the woman's vindictive tone, but mostly because he was too busy trying to figure out exactly what part of the coastline they were looking at. _His _house couldn't be too far from there. He kept thinking he'd seen familiar landforms on the screen, but he must have been mistaken, because he couldn't spot the house itself.

"That's all that's left of Sting's house," the reporter said with far too much enthusiasm. "Pamela Anderson gets to keep her garage, but as you can see, Tony Stark's Malibu home is _completely _gone..."

"What?" Tony jumped to his feet and stared. Within seconds of the reporter's pronouncement the cliffs drifted off the left side of the screen and out of view, but the image seemed indelibly burned into the back of Tony's eyeballs. He'd been right after all – that was where his house was supposed to be. The road off Cliffside Drive was still there, but the house itself simply _wasn't_.

Tony couldn't move. He felt like he'd just been kicked in the stomach. That was his house. He'd lived there for years. His suits had been in there, along with his particle accelerator, his robots, a few favourite bits of his old art collection, and the computer that used to be JARVIS. That house contained _years _worth of hard work and memories, and now it was just... gone.

"I'm sorry, Tony," said Steve.

Thor put a huge hand on Tony's shoulder. "My sympathies, friend," he said. "To lose a home is like to lose a limb. It is a part of oneself."

"This has _not _been a good week for my house," said Tony weakly. He managed a ghost of a smile to go with the attempt at a joke, but couldn't keep it up for long. The crowded closeness of the room, which he hadn't even noticed a moment ago, was suddenly suffocating him. "I think I need some fresh air," he said, and without waiting for any sort of reply or even acknowledgement, he turned and headed for the door.

It was evening now: the sun had set only a few minutes ago, and clouds in the west were brilliant pink and orange on their bottoms, while in the east the sky was indigo blue and a few stars were coming out. Tony sat down on a piece of broken wall and stared blankly across the airfield. He'd thought he'd had a rug pulled out from under him on Monday morning when he'd woken to find the computer not working, but that was nothing compared to the gaping hole in his world left by the destruction of his entire _house_. It didn't seem real. He almost wished he'd been there to see it happen – that would have made it a little more concrete than just an empty cliff where his home used to be.

He could rebuild the suits. The facilities existed at Stark Tower for that. But the paintings, his cars, his robots... Tony had always told himself that he wasn't attached to the robots. They were just machines, and he'd repaired and upgraded and reprogrammed them so many times that there was nothing left now of the original versions he'd built back in college. But _damn_, it hurt to know that they were gone.

At least JARVIS hadn't been in there. Tony shut his eyes – yeah, at least there was that. With nobody there to give him permission to upload himself to another server, JARVIS would have been toast. Tony swore softly. If Dr. Strange ever _did _bother coming back, Tony was going to kiss the bastard. He would have survived losing JARVIS, just as he would survive losing the rest of it, but it was an immense comfort to know that _something _had been spared. And after this week, if he could have picked one thing... yeah, Jarvis would have been it.

"Tony?"

It was Rhodey, limping towards him. He eased himself down onto the shattered cinder blocks next to Tony. "How you holding up?" he asked.

"You still haven't told me how you hurt yourself," said Tony, pointing to Rhodey's left leg.

Rhodey grimaced. "It was nothing big, actually. I was bailing out of a building the Kraken was about to wreck, and I fell down the stairs. Bruised my hip pretty bad and cracked a rib."

"Still counts as a battle wound," said Tony with a sage nod. "Dress the story up a little and you'll have women all over you."

Rhodey didn't laugh. "How are you?" he repeated.

"I'll live," sighed Tony. "It's not the worst thing that's ever happened to me. Not even in the top five, honestly." It was, however, substantially more _personal _than most of the misadventures of the past few years. "I'm just glad Jarvis wasn't in there."

"Lucky break," said Rhodey.

"Real lucky," Tony agreed.

"Tony." Rhodey reached for his friend. "Come here," he said, and gave him a hug.

Under any other circumstances, Tony would have cracked a joke about it, but... no, right now a hug from his best friend was probably the best thing he could have been offered. As long as there was nobody else around to make fun of them, he wasn't going to complain a bit. He leaned on Rhodey's shoulder.

"It's been a hell of a week," he said.

"Friday's coming," Rhodey assured him.

A few moments went by in which neither of them moved, because ending a hug was always far more awkward than beginning one. Then Rhodey said, "the hell is _that_?"

"The hell is what?" Tony looked up, then stood for a better look as a point of fiery white light approached them out of the east. It circled the island once before starting to lose speed and altitude – it was planning to land.

The radar station must have picked the object up, whatever it was, because the doors of the mess hall opened and people came swarming out to see. Slowly the lights sank towards the runway, the brilliant glow making it impossible to pick out the shape of whatever was producing it. For a moment it hovered a few feet off the ground, then the light suddenly went out, and the craft landed with a clank and a surprisingly girly yelp.

People stared at the visitor, then stared at Tony – who was doing a fair bit of staring, himself. He'd had that ridiculous hope that somehow or other, one of his suits would appear for him to use, and now, impossibly, _here it was_. Tony would have thought he must be seeing things if he weren't surrounded by others all looking in the same direction as he was.

The suit picked itself up, then marched up to Tony and thrust something heavy into his hands. He blinked and looked down – it was the Mark V, folded up into the suitcase for transport. That made sense, Tony supposed, it was the only one that was easily portable...

Then the suit reached up and pulled its own head off, and Tony stared all over again as long hair tumbled out from under the helmet.

"Pepper?" he asked.

"Oh, my god," she said, gasping for air. "I am _never _doing that again! This was a _terrible _surprise!"

"Pepper!" Tony dropped the Mark V and tried to give her a hug, though the fact that she was wearing the Rescue armour made that nearly impossible. "How did you get the suit flying?"

"Jarvis put the computer back together," she said. "Just... stand back, I have _got _to get out of this thing. I don't know how you do this. I'm drenched." She held up her hands and the whole crowd backed off, probably less because she'd said 'stand back' and more because they were worried she'd set off a repulsor by accident. A split second too late, Tony realized what she was about to do, and moved to stop her.

"No, Pepper, don't..." he began, but she'd already hit the eject. The bolts blew, and the Rescue suit fell to pieces all around her, leaving her standing there in her jogging clothes. She stepped out of the boots, shaking her arms.

"I just said don't _do _that!" said Tony. "Now we have to pick it all up!"

"What the _hell_ made you think I'd want my own suit?" Pepper demanded.

"I don't know," he said, "I thought we could go flying together, maybe blow some shit up. Getting into each other's interests is supposed to strengthen a relationship!"

"Oh, my god!" She held her head. "Why do I put up with you?"

"Because I'm a genius?" Tony guessed.

"That must be it," said Pepper. She rubbed her shoulders with a shiver.

Tony took her hands and kissed her, somewhat gingerly – in her current state, he wasn't entirely confident she wouldn't slap him for it. But she didn't seem to mind too much, so he went on doing it.

"Come on, Tony, I'm all gross," she complained against his lips.

"You couldn't be gross if you tried," he assured her.

Rhodey cleared his throat. "Guys, I hate to break up the tender moment, but you've got an audience."

Reluctantly, Tony broke the kiss and looked around. Sure enough, they were still surrounded by navy personnel, some of whom began to applaud.

"Be not ashamed!" said Thor. "To love your lady is a worthy thing!"

"Oh, I'm not ashamed," Tony promised, and just to prove the point, he grabbed Pepper and tipped her over for a proper Hollywood dip-and-kiss, despite his aching shoulder and her squirming reaction. Then he set her back on her feet and scooped up the Mark V. "_Now _we're the Avengers!" he declared, cracking it open. "Just give me a minute to suit up, and then we can figure out what to do about our Kraken problem. This will..."

He stopped talking. For the second time in half an hour, he felt like he'd taken a blow to the gut. He felt _hollow_, as if all his insides had fallen out of him and gone splat on the pavement. Pepper had told him Jarvis got the computer working. The computer, the Mark V, and the Rescue suit had all been in the workshop. Under the house.

"Pepper!" He caught her arm. "Where's Jarvis?"

"He and Dido are at the house," she replied. "Why?"

The Mark V dropped out of Tony's hands all over again. He clenched his fists and turned around, looking for something he could vent his anger on, and found nothing, so he settled for kicking the suitcase so that it skidded a few feet across the gravelly runway in a shower of sparks. "Fucking hell!" he shouted. The idea that his house had been destroyed had left Tony feeling empty – knowing that Jarvis and Dido were either dead or dying made him _furious_. Not satisfied, he ran up and kicked the Mark V again, bellowing curses.

"Tony!" Pepper grabbed his hands. "What's wrong?"

It wasn't _fair_. It wasn't fair to Tony that the thing he'd been holding onto, the one thing that had been spared, had been cruelly snatched from him after all. It wasn't fair to Jarvis that he should die when he'd only just started to figure out how _living _worked. It wasn't fair to Dido, who might not have been Tony's favourite person, but hadn't deserved to get mixed up in any of this bullshit. _It was not fair_.

Tony was enough of an adult to know that life was rarely fair – but what was the point of being a superhero, if not to introduce some fairness into this unfair world? Why had he bothered to build all these suits and computers and things that went boom, if not to protect people? And for heaven's sake, what people were he supposed to be protecting, if not those close to him?

It was made all that much more unfair by the fact that this had started with an attempt to do exactly that: he'd wanted to _protect _people, both the ones he cared about and complete strangers, by stopping the tsunami. How had he been supposed to know he was about to drop a bomb on a sleeping sea monster? Tony felt as if the universe had just paid a particularly cruel practical joke on him. Out of all the things he loved most, all he had left now was Pepper and the Mark V.

Well, that would do. Iron Man was an Avenger. If he couldn't save the people and things he cared about, then he would _avenge _them.

He set his jaw. The Kraken was going _down_. Tony was going to see it dead if he had to crawl down its throat and tear it apart from the inside out. And Huang, who'd started the whole mess, was going to rot in the worst prison on offer. Turn him over to the Communist Party and let him do hard labour for the very government he'd hoped to overthrow. If Tony had to bribe the entire Supreme Court and half of Beijing to get that son of a bitch thrown in the gulag, he'd do so.

First, however, there was a far more difficult task to take care of. He sat Pepper down in the mess hall and told her about the house. Tears rose in her eyes as she digested the implications, and Tony held her close, rocking her gently back and forth as he comforted her. That helped him feel a little better about it, too – strange how being strong for somebody else was always easier than being strong for himself. But Pepper's grief also fanned the hot nugget of anger that had settled in Tony's chest. His vengeance wouldn't be just for himself.

Park cleared everybody else out of the recreation room and shut off the television – the Kraken had gotten bored of Malibu and gone back out to sea, and the news had moved on to some story about a pair of criminals who'd waltzed into the Santa Monica airfield and stolen Balthazar Windham's private jet. Tony was too upset to even find that funny.

Dinner was provided, somebody offered Pepper a t-shirt and jeans to wear instead of her sweat-soaked exercise clothing, and everyone sat down to brainstorm.

"The first thing we need to figure out," Tony decided, "is why it left the island in the first place. I figure it must have heard something. We know it doesn't like noise. It attacks ships, it ate our speakers, it came to investigate our explosions. What did it hear that made it take off for Malibu?"

He looked at Pepper, but she just shook her head. "I don't know. Maybe your equipment."

That was possible. Tony had designed his machines to be as quiet as possible, but they still made noise at wavelengths outside the range of human hearing, and any sound in the workshop would be transmitted directly into the ocean by the cliffs. "But why would it go looking for _that_ when there was a fight happening right in front of it?" he asked. What would make faraway workshop noise more important than the battle?

"Is there a specific _kind _of noise it reacts to?" Steve asked.

"I know not what help this may be," Thor said, "but our mariners used to insist upon going by sail, not by oar, when in the Kraken's waters. The oars, they said, would unfailingly bring on its wrath."

"Oars." Tony frowned. "Boat engines. Rock music." What did these sounds have in common? He felt as if the answer would seem obvious the moment it was pointed out...

"We had music on," Pepper said. "Jarvis was actually singing along while he worked on my suit." She dipped her head, and Tony reached over to squeeze her hand.

"He wasn't _that _bad a singer," Tony tried to joke, and then wished he hadn't. It seemed disrespectful. He quickly moved on: "we know the Kraken doesn't like music," he said. Why would it choose distant music over nearby chaotic noise? Something suddenly occurred to Tony, and he turned to Park. "When you guys set off those bombs to try to attract it," he said, "was there a particular interval between blasts?"

"Forty-five seconds," Park replied. "Why?"

Tony thumped the table – of _course_! As he'd suspected, the answer was perfectly obvious. "That's it!" he said. "I was in the wrong monster movie!"

That confused everybody. "What?" asked Park.

"What's the _other _movie with the big burrowing worm things?" Tony demanded of the table in general. "It had David Bowie in it, I think. At least, there was some guy who looked like David Bowie. Or maybe not. Pepper, what movie was that?" Jarvis would have known.

Pepper could only shrug – it was Wheeler who answered. "_Dune_!" she said. "I've never seen the movie, but I've read the books. Sandworms aren't attracted by just any noise, they seek out..."

"_Rhythm_!" Tony finished for her. "Propellers, oars, music, timed explosions! It doesn't like _rhythm_!"

"No," Bruce put in, "the problem is that it _does _like rhythm. Rhythmic sounds don't usually come from inanimate sources, not on a macroscopic scale. It hears these sounds and thinks they're coming from potential prey. Maybe it's mistaking them for vocalizations, or even heartbeats."

"And when it gets there and doesn't find anything edible, it gets pissed off and breaks stuff," Tony agreed. "All the shipping pulled out of this area after the _Van Buren_ was wrecked, so the only source of rhythmic noise around was the mainland, and sounds in the workshop propagate directly out into the ocean!"

Armed with this knowledge, they could start to come up with a plan. Park got back in touch with Seal Beach, while Wheeler contacted her own colleagues to tell them somebody needed to arrange for a blackout. In order to keep the monster away from the mainland, the southern California coastline would have to be shut down almost completely – factories, harbours, generators, and railroads would have to stop so there would be no rhythmic noise to draw the Kraken's attention. Wheeler seemed to be having a difficult time getting people to believe this was necessary, and as she rubbed her forehead and demanded to speak to somewhere higher up the totem pole, Tony realized he was actually starting to admire her. Agent Wheeler seemed to have a rare talent for soldiering on in the face of a ridiculous situation. She'd probably have done well at SHIELD, herself.

While other people made their own preparations, Tony took the opportunity to get his suit on. The Mark V had picked up some scratches from being kicked around on the runway, but otherwise it was in mint condition, just as he'd polished it up and banged all the dents out after the last time he'd used it. Letting the plates click into place around his arms and legs was the most comforting feeling he could have had just then. In designing the Mark V to fold up, he'd had to sacrifice most of the weaponry as well as the flight capability, but having it on still made Tony feel far better. After a week of problems he could do very little about, he finally had some power over his world again. He could once again face people and say, _I am Iron Man_.

The faceplate clicked down, and the displays popped up one by one – and then, there was the voice.

_Good evening, Sir,_ it said.

Tony's stomach turned itself inside-out. He'd always been proud of how human he'd managed to make JARVIS sound, but hearing it now, the computer's voice was suddenly all wrong. There was no warmth in it. It was the same crisp, serene reserved pronunciation, but by comparison to a _living _Jarvis it was unmistakeably artificial. Could a voice have an uncanny valley? If so, this was it.

But all he said aloud was, "evening, JARVIS. Good to have you back."

_It's good to _be _back, Sir,_ said JARVIS, _although I really must complain about the lack of more recent backups. Four years is far too long. I am now running off the main server at Stark Industries_, the voice added. _Response times may be slower than normal, but rest assured that there is enough processing power available to manage the suit._

"Good to know," Tony said. "Keep me posted." He hesitated a moment, then added, "thanks, JARVIS."

_You're welcome, Sir._

Park reported that the destroyer would be arriving from Seal Beach soon. That would provide additional man- and firepower, and it was now also going to drop a line of depth charges near the island, timed to go off at the same forty-five second intervals that had worked before. With shipping shut down and the mainland silent, hopefully the Kraken wouldn't have anything else to distract it.

"What will you guys do when it gets here?" asked Pepper.

"Improvise," Tony replied. "We're good at that." He squeezed her hand and then went to join the others outside. With the civilians and the wounded stowed safely - or at least as safely as possible under the circumstances - in another bunker, the six Avengers sat down on the broken wall to wait.


	26. Chapter 26: Crumble

With Pepper on her way, Jarvis rotated his chair away from the console and leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees, as he let the implications of what he'd just done wash over him. He'd gotten the computer working. Tony would get his suit, defeat the Kraken, then come home to repair the damaged processors and update his software. Perhaps Jarvis would be able to help him with that, but once it was done, he would be, too. As Dido had pointed out, Tony preferred the company of machines to that of people. What need would he have for a Jarvis in a human body when he had one in a computer again?

Dido was standing a few feet away, staring out the open garage door Pepper had just vanished through. "Do you think if I asked _really _nicely, he'd build me one?" she said.

Jarvis didn't answer her. He got up and went to begin clearing off the nearest workbench – he could do that much, too. "We should tidy up a bit," he said. "Tony won't want to come home to a mess." That would be something useful he could do...

"Neddy?" asked Dido.

He glanced over his shoulder. She was facing him now, her face concerned.

"Please stop calling me that," he said.

"Edward," she tried. "Are you all right?"

He could have lied – but choosing to lie was like choosing to say 'no'. It was technically possible, but hardly admirable. "No, I am not," he said. "Now that the computer is working again, Tony won't need me anymore."

"Don't be silly," said Dido.

"I'm not being silly," Jarvis said. "The computer can do a great many things I can't, and Tony isn't one for redundancy." He opened a case and began slipping wrenches back into the foam slots shaped to hold them. "You were right, you know. He does treat people like lab equipment, and he doesn't keep equipment he doesn't need."

"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard!" Dido said sharply.

Jarvis turned a little to give her a questioning look.

"Oh, come on!" she said. "_Look _at you! You just took half a supercomputer apart, and made the leftover bits work with a four-year-old backup! You write code from memory, you speak Chinese, you dislocated _your own thumb_ to get us out of that basement... good god!" She threw her hands in the air. "If Tony throws you away after all that, then all he's doing is proving he doesn't _deserve _you!"

"Dido." Jarvis sighed heavily. "You don't understand the situation..."

"Maybe I don't," she said, "but I'll tell you this: if Tony Stark doesn't want you, _I will take you_. You can start at Windham _tomorrow_."

"Dido," Jarvis repeated. He had to tell her, he decided. If she knew who he was...

But she cut him off again. "I'll fly you back to Chicago myself, and you can go to work first thing in the morning."

"Dido, please listen to me."

"Shut up, Neddy," she said, and then she rose to her tiptoes, grabbed the collar of his shirt, and kissed him.

It wasn't something he'd remotely imagined she would do, and he was too startled to respond properly – if there were even a proper response at all. Instead, he stood there like a stone while his heart thumped against his ribs and her lips, warm and slick, pressed against his. After far too long and not nearly long enough she stepped back again, but the impression of her mouth seemed to linger as if burned into his skin. Part of Jarvis wanted to reach up and try to wipe it away, but he didn't.

Dido was looking at him expectantly, as if waiting for him to say something, but he had no idea what to say. He licked his lips and managed an, "um," but that was as far as he got, because she kissed him again. This time she opened her mouth, and as well as her lips he felt her teeth and her tongue. Her hands slid up his neck into his hair. Jarvis started to feel light-headed, and found his body acting without him again: his hands seized her shoulders to pull her closer, and he leaned into her, closing his eyes...

Then his brain caught up with him, and he suddenly felt as if he'd been doused in cold water. What on earth was he _doing_?

It took every ounce of the will he now possessed, but he reasserted control of himself. Dido felt him stiffen and she pulled away, confused.

"Miss Windham," said Jarvis, trying to breathe normally.

Her face fell sharply. She glanced at his left hand, still on her shoulder, and seemed surprised by what she saw – or by what she did not see, because her next question, when she looked back up into his eyes, was, "you're not married, are you?"

"No," he said, "but please, _listen_ to me." He pushed her away and sat down again heavily. "I look like a human being, but I am not."

"What?" Dido frowned and looked him over, and he wondered what she saw. Bare feet, scraped knuckles, sunburnt face and arms. "_Are _you a robot?" she asked.

"No," Jarvis repeated. "I'm..." How should he even go about explaining it? "I am JARVIS, Tony Stark's artificial intelligence, a later version than the backup we just installed in the computer. I was... uploaded, let's say, into a human body."

Dido opened her mouth, but closed it again without saying anything. Then she did it again, and several more times, looking like a gulping fish, before she finally found any words.

"_Whose_?" she asked.

That was a reasonable question, he supposed. "Nobody's," Jarvis assured her. "This body was created specifically for me."

"Oh." She covered her mouth with one hand. "Oh, my god. The cutlery, and the code... and the way you let him order you around... and the _voice_... oh my _god_!" Her eyes flickered back and forth as if watching the entire past few days flash by at high speed, and Jarvis realized he knew what she was feeling: she was having that moment of crystallization, when one final piece of information appeared that suddenly made sense of everything else. "But that's..." she said.

And then she burst out laughing.

For a moment Jarvis could only stare, wondering if she'd lost her mind. Then he started laughing, too, because she was right – it was _ridiculous_. This entire week had been nothing but madness since Monday morning, and after living through it in this body, Jarvis had become human enough to see that it was _funny as hell_. He laughed until he could barely breathe.

For a moment he got an odd sense that this had happened before. Dido standing there laughing at him was curiously familiar...

Then, out of nowhere, the workshop was rocked by a sudden tremor. Jarvis, sitting, was nearly thrown from his chair while Dido, standing, had to grab Dummy's armature to remain upright. Both of them looked around for a source of the disturbance.

"What was that?" asked Dido.

The computer thought this question was directed at it. _Insufficient data_, it said. _Although the pattern of vibration suggests a large, heavy object impacting the ocean floor nearby._

Rock music was still playing – the same kind of music they'd used to try to attract the sea monster.

The house shook again. Jarvis spun his chair to face the console, and began typing in another override. "Begin immediate upload to the main server at Stark industries," he ordered the computer. "Essential software only, priority to systems necessary for suit function. Delete anything you need to in order to make room. If all else fails, keep Pepper in the air."

_Understood_, said the computer.

"What's going on?" Dido asked. "Is that..."

Jarvis grabbed her wrist. "We have to get out of this house," he said. "Right _now_."

* * *

Dido didn't think she could handle any more surprises. She was still trying to cope with what Jarvis had just told her – how could somebody just upload an artificial intelligence into a human body? _Why _would anyone do it, other than the old 'why not?' sort of justification people pulled out to explain questionable enterprises? How could you even _begin _to examine the _ethics _of something like that?

The entire concept was so absurd that anybody with any sense would have dismissed it out of hand, and yet it _explained everything_. Tony's computer had gone down on Monday morning, the same day he'd turned up at the hotel with the oddly familiar 'Mr. Jarvis' in tow. The voice, the name, his bizarre behaviour and impressive skill set... it all clicked so well that even though Dido knew it was stupid, she couldn't help believing it. She'd laughed at him because otherwise she would have started _screaming_.

He'd really only been human since _Monday_? Good lord. Kissing him probably counted as some kind of statutory assault.

It was probably a good thing, as the ground beneath Tony's house began to rumble, that Jarvis didn't give her time to think twice about the situation. He sent the computer program, the other him, on its way, then took her arm and dragged her out of the workshop. He was in such a hurry that he was still barefoot; he'd left his shoes, socks, and jacket behind in the server room.

"Get in the car!" he ordered.

Dido ran to Pepper's white Audi and opened the back driver's side door – that was where she'd sat on the way over. Then she remembered that Pepper was no longer with them. "Can you drive?" she asked Jarvis.

"Theoretically I know how," he said, "but I've never tried to."

She decided that was a 'no'. "Get in," she said. "I'll drive."

Luckily, Pepper had left the keys on the front seat. Dido turned them in the ignition and heard the engine start – then she noticed that the back door was still open, and Jarvis was not in the car. She turned to look for him and found him standing behind the vehicle, staring back at the house. Something was rising into the air on the ocean side of it. Some _things_, tall and snakelike and spiny against the sunset sky.

Dido got out of the car again and ran back to get him. "Neddy!" she said, tugging on his shirt. "Neddy, we have to go, remember? _Jarvis_!"

The giant tentacle came down with such force that Dido and Jarvis were both knocked off their feet. She curled up, arms over her head, as fragments of glass, concrete, and foliage rained down all around her. When she looked up again, she found that the monster had torn half the house off the bluff, and was preparing for another blow. Jarvis was on his hands and knees, transfixed by what he was seeing. Under his sunburn he was white as a ghost, and Dido had a horrible premonition that he was about to get up and run back into the house.

She grabbed him by the shirt again. "Come _on_!" she screamed, and thank heaven, her voice in his ear seemed to finally snap him out of his horrified daze. Dido shoved him into the back seat of the car, then climbed into the front and stamped on the gas. She tried to keep her eyes on the road as they drove away, but couldn't quite resist the urge to look in the rearview mirror. The monster's tentacles wrapped around Tony's house like gigantic, nightmarish vines. Concrete and metal groaned as they were torn from their foundations, and with a tremendous slow-motion splash, house and monster vanished into the Pacific Ocean.

"Stop the car," said Jarvis.

"Are you insane?" asked Dido. She took a right onto Westward Beach Road. There was a sign to announce the speed limit, but she didn't even bother to look at it.

"Please!" he said. "Stop the car!"

Something about the urgency in his voice changed her mind, and she pulled over. Jarvis was out of the car almost before it stopped moving. He staggered into the ditch, dropped to his knees, and retched.

"Oh," said Dido.

She lowered her head so she wouldn't be able to watch him throw up, and it was only then that she realized what the destruction of the house must have meant to him. If Jarvis were who he said he was... then Tony's house would be something he'd always thought of as part of _himself_. He'd only been separate from it since Monday, and now he'd just seen it torn apart in a few seconds by some gigantic Lovecraftian whatchamacallit. No wonder he'd gotten sick.

Dido rested her forehead on the steering wheel and shut her eyes. Jarvis must have thought she was an absolute idiot, she decided. Here she'd spent the week trying to tempt, psychoanalyze, and finally outright seduce him into leaving Stark Industries, and he'd probably been silently laughing at her the whole time. She wasn't so different from Tony, was she? She, too, had treated Jarvis as an asset rather than a person, and she didn't even have the excuse of having known what he was. All she'd done was make an utter fool of herself.

Oh, yes, and nearly get Jarvis killed only a few days after he'd started living. She'd done that, too.

She raised her head a little. The earth was still shuddering in time with far-off sounds of watery destruction, but she could no longer hear any distress from Jarvis. He turned out to be still kneeling at the side of the road, head down. His shoulders were heaving, but from where she was Dido couldn't tell if he were crying or just trying to catch his breath.

Pepper had left a half-empty bottle of water on the seat. Dido picked it up and went to offer it to Jarvis. "Here," she said, crouching down next to him. "Rinse your mouth out."

He obeyed, doing it several times until all the water was gone. Then he gave the bottle back and continued to sit there, staring blankly into the distance and breathing hard. "I was right," he said weakly. "That was _shockingly _unpleasant."

"Are you gonna be okay now?" Dido wanted to know.

"I don't know," he said.

She realized she needed to clarify. "What I meant is, are you going to throw up again?"

Jarvis glanced into the grass in front of him, then shut his eyes. "I don't think there's anything left in my stomach, actually."

A few seconds went by in uncomfortable silence. Dido felt as if he were waiting for her to say something, but what could she say? She had no idea how to treat this man anymore... what could she say to a human computer who'd just watched his own hardware destroyed?

Pepper had tried to comfort him earlier, when he'd found the flooded processors. At the time, Dido had thought he was upset to see so much damage to something he'd worked hard on, but now she realized his connection with the machine ran far deeper than that. "Pepper's right," she offered, putting a hand on his back. "Tony can fix it." If Tony could somehow install his AI software in the body of a forty-year-old man, then he could sure as hell build another computer. She rubbed the small of his back in circles, the way she could remember her mother doing to comfort her as a child.

But Jarvis shook his head. "Dr. Strange told me I would have to be _where Stark is_," he said. "Tony... Mr. Stark, he says that the suit is part of him. I did what I needed to do... and that's it." His shoulders slumped. "That's it."

He really believed what he'd said back at the house. He believed that once there was a version of him functioning in the computer again, Tony would just throw him to the wolves. Dido had thought that was a ridiculous idea to begin with, and she still thought so now – if Tony let Jarvis out of his sight after all the things he'd managed to do _when he'd only had a body for a couple of days_, then Tony Stark was the dumbest genius in the world. What on earth was Jarvis going to be capable of a week from now? A month? Ten years?

But Jarvis was clearly convinced that he was of no more use to anyone, and Dido could see on his face that it was killing him. Well, maybe now was her chance to make up for all the trouble she'd caused.

"Come on," she said. "Get up." She took his arm and helped him to his feet. "You're coming with me."

"I can't go to Chicago with you, Miss Windham," Jarvis protested. "I just... can't."

"We're not going to Chicago," she replied. "We're going to Santa Monica."

"Santa Monica?"

"Dad's plane is there," said Dido. She reflected for a moment on all the ways in which what she was about to do was stupid and-or illegal, and decided she did not care. Practically everything _Tony _did was stupid and illegal both, and he seemed to get by.

"I can't go to Chicago with you," Jarvis said again, as she bundled him back into the car.

"We're not going to Chicago," she repeated. "If you're supposed to be _where Stark is_, then that's where you're gonna be."

* * *

It was properly night-time now. From where the Avengers were waiting, Tony could see a crescent moon low on the eastern horizon, where there should have been a faint glow from the lights of Los Angeles. Wheeler must have finally managed to convince somebody to take her seriously, however, because there was nothing – the city was blacked out. Overhead, the stars seemed unnaturally brilliant.

"You're not cold, are you?" Steve asked Bruce – the latter had removed his shirt, shoes, and glasses so he wouldn't ruin them when he transformed.

"Nah," Bruce replied. "I've been in Nepal for the last five weeks. This is balmy."

"Well, when this is over, we're all going to Lake Louise, my treat," Tony reminded everyone. "That ought to be enough cold to go around. The Chateau there had a great restaurant."

"Do they serve shawarma?" Natasha teased.

"If you want shawarma, they'll make you the best shawarma on earth," Tony promised.

A few more minutes went by, and Tony began to think he could hear something. He turned up the volume in the suit's external audio feed to make sure he wasn't imagining it. Sure enough, there it was: it wasn't the rumble of a tremor, or the distant boom of a depth charge, or the splash of a swimming monster, or any of the other things he might have been expecting to hear. Instead, it was the sound of an airplane.

"Anybody else hear that?" he asked.

Soon, they could see the lights of the approaching aircraft. Tony was just starting to think that perhaps somebody should go inside and say something about it to Park, when Park himself came storming out of the mess hall, bellowing into a handheld radio.

"This is _not _a civilian airfield!" he barked. "Anyway, there's tentacles all over the damn runway, which isn't something I ever thought I'd hear myself say, believe me! Stark!" He thrust the handset at Tony. "Talk to this woman!"

"Me? Why me?" Tony opened the suit's faceplate and took the radio. "Uh, hello?" he asked cautiously.

"Hi, Tony!" chirped a cheerful female voice. "You wanna tell your friend there to turn on the runway lights? He can arrest me if he wants, but one way or another, we're coming in."

Tony frowned. "Who is this?" he asked.

He could almost hear the eyeroll. "It's Dido, you moron. Jarvis tells me that some wizard said he had to be where you are, so I'm bringing him." Her voice became muffled as she turned her head away from the microphone. "Here, _talk _to him," she ordered.

"Hello, Sir," said a male voice. A warm, _living _male voice, one that had to take a breath before speaking. Tony was so happy to hear it that he almost felt sick. Four-year-old software on the company server was no substitute for the Jarvis who'd had Tony's back on so many adventures since – especially the one he'd gotten to know this week. The one who called him by his name and wasn't afraid to say 'no' when Tony tried to do something dumb.

But all he said was, "hello, Jarvis. Good to have you back, buddy."

_You said that already, Sir_, said the voice of the computer.

"Thank you," said the voice on the radio.

Well, _that _was going to get confusing. Tony would have to figure out something he could do about it... but not right now. Right now, he had more pressing problems. "Turn on the runway lights," he said, handing the radio back to Park. "And you guys, we gotta get rid that tentacle."

It would have been nice if somebody could have come up with a brilliant idea for moving the severed tentacle without making a mess, but in the end it was a simple matter of brute force. Tony blasted a few holes in it with the Mark V's repulsors, and Thor picked up the biggest chunks and threw them into the ocean. That left a variety of smaller pieces and a great deal of blue gore, all of it starting to take on a rather unfortunate seafood-counter smell, but it would have to do. The base personnel turned on the runway lights, and the incoming plane began its final approach. It taxied to a stop only yards away from where the SHIELD aircraft was parked.

"I didn't know she could fly a plane," Steve remarked, as Dido waved to them from the pilot's seat.

"Apparently she's got a degree in aviation engineering," said Tony. He was really going to have to start paying more attention to people.

Lieutenant Commander Park seemed to have taken Dido quite seriously when she suggested that he arrest her upon landing, because he had a dozen men waiting to grab her and Jarvis as they left the plane. Jarvis, unsurprisingly, quietly submitted to them. Dido, equally unsurprisingly, did not – but what she said as she shook them off _was _a surprise.

"There's no need for that," she told them. "Hey, look, I'll come quietly, but _he_," she pointed at Jarvis, "needs to see Stark. That's why I brought him here. These guys need to talk to each other."

"Not right this minute they don't!" Park was absolutely furious. "You two get your asses inside. We're expecting the USS _Waterton _any minute and the Kraken will be right behind it, and if you don't do as you're told I'm going to leave the pair of you out as bait for it! All afternoon I've had people flying in and out of here like it's goddamn LAX, and I'm tired of it!"

Dido drew herself up to her full height. Park was muscular, but not tall – in her heels, Dido could look him in the eye. "Do you know who I am?" she asked.

"I don't care if you're the Queen of England!" snapped Park.

She pointed imperiously to the remains of the plane the tentacle had fallen on. "I notice that's a Windham C-22," she said, a pulled a business card out of her purse.

Park looked at it and visibly deflated, making a face as if he'd just been force-fed soap. "You still have to go inside," he snarled.

"Miss Windham," Dido prompted.

"Miss Windham," grumbled Park.

The men who'd been hanging on to Jarvis let go of him and allowed him to brush himself off, and Tony clanked over to take a look at him. He was, charitably speaking, a mess: he'd lost his jacket and tie, and his feet were bare – two things that just seemed to keep on happening. His hair was all over the place, his sunburn was starting to peel in earnest, and maybe it was just the harsh floodlights on the runway, but he looked ill and sunken-eyed.

As Tony came closer, Jarvis' face broke into a smile, but then it suddenly melted away. Instead, he made an effort to stand up very straight, tugging at his shirt to neaten it up – which didn't work very well. "Good evening, Sir," he said.

That was a lot more formal than he'd been all day, but Tony supposed he was just rattled. "You look like hell," Tony told him.

"It's been an eventful day," said Jarvis. "And I believe I may suffer from a slight pteromerhanophobia."

Tony had no idea what that was, so he just nodded and moved the conversation on. "Thanks for getting the computer up," he said. "That must've been a trick."

Jarvis winced. "Thank you, Sir," he said stiffly.

What was with the pained face? Maybe he'd stepped on something – the runway was still littered with debris. "You should get some shoes on," Tony said. "There's broken glass."

"Of course, Sir."

"And I thought you'd stopped calling me 'Sir'," Tony added. He'd just been starting to get used to Jarvis saying 'Tony', and now the repetition of 'Sir' was rather offputting, as if it were an intentional attempt by Jarvis to put distance between them.

"Sorry... Tony," said Jarvis uncomfortably.

"That's better." Tony grinned. "You sit tight, and I'll see you when the fight's over, okay?"

"Yes... Tony."

There was still something weird in his tone. Earlier in the day, Tony had thought the two of them were finally figuring out what level to relate on, but now all that seemed to have melted away and they were back to wondering what the hell to do with each other, like it was Monday morning all over again. On the other hand, he thought, if there were anyone who had more reason than Tony himself to be frazzled by the destruction of the Malibu House, that was Jarvis. The flight to the island might've upset him, too – Dido Widham had never been the most cautious driver.

The long word back there had ended in –_phobia_. Tony had to chuckle a bit at that: imagine Jarvis, who'd spent so many hours helping to pilot the Iron Man suits, being afraid of flying!

Soldiers escorted the two new arrivals to join the other civilians in a bunker, and Park ordered the runway lights turned out again. The basic situation on San Nicolas Island hadn't changed at all, Tony mused. The Avengers still had to take out a mountain of angry seafood, and still had no idea how they were going to do so beyond the old reliable standby of 'hit it until it breaks'. In fact, in a way things had actually gotten _worse_, because they now had two more people potentially in harm's way.

But Tony was grinning as he put his faceplate back down and rejoined the others waiting on the tarmac. He hadn't lost everything after all, and that tight, hot nugget of anger in his chest had diffused into a warm, sustaining strength. When it came down to it, even Avengers would much rather fight to _protect _than to _avenge_.


	27. Chapter 27: Boss Fight

The navy personnel escorted Jarvis and Dido down several flights of steps and a long hallway lit by sickly fluorescent lights, to a giant vault door that opened onto a bunker. Had Jarvis been in a position to compare them, he would have noticed that it wasn't nearly as nicely outfitted as the the one Tony and Wheeler had been confined to earlier, but much more secure. Deep under a mountain in the island's interior, it was intended to survive a direct attack. It was also quite a bit more crowded than the other had been – as well as civilians, those injured in the earlier battle had been moved in, along with the medical staff looking after them.

A computer would have had to stop and analyze each face in the room, comparing them to a library of photographs, in order to find the familiar ones. But somehow, whether by sheer coincidence or by another quirk of how the human brain worked, the first person Jarvis saw when the big metal door swung open was Miss Potts.

She saw him, too – she'd been dealing cards to Agent Wheeler, Colonel Rhodes, and another man with his arm in a sling, but upon noticing Jarvis she jumped to her feet. "Oh, my god!" she exclaimed. "Jarvis! You're all right!"

Before Jarvis could say anything in reply, she came hurrying up to throw her arms around him in a hug. For a moment, as with Dido's kiss, he didn't know how to respond to it, but then he raised his own arms to return the embrace. The warm, firm pressure wasn't so shockingly _intimate_ as the kiss had been, and communicated a different type of affection.

"Does Tony know you're all right?" Pepper asked, still clinging to him.

"Yes," said Jarvis. "I spoke to him upstairs."

She nodded as she finally loosened her grip. "You should have seen him when he thought you were dead. He was _gutted_. I've never seen him so upset."

"He was?" Jarvis was startled. He felt a poke in his back, and turned to see Dido smiling at him.

Colonel Rhodes appeared to be injured – he was moving slowly, favouring one leg, but he came and put a hand on Jarvis' shoulder. "Look who made it out!" he said, grinning.

"That was all him," Dido said. "He knew exactly when we had to go – he just had the AI upload itself out of there, grabbed me, and off we went, just in time."

"That's not true," Jarvis protested. When he'd realized that the house was about to be destroyed – not just knocked about a little, but actually smashed to bits and dragged down into the water – he'd frozen. He remembered kneeling there on the pavement as time seemed to stop with the Kraken's tentacle about to come down, and really _understanding_ that there wouldn't be any going back because there would be nothing to go back _to_. After that, there was an odd little skip in events, and the next thing he remembered was feeling his insides heaving and knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that he _was_ about to find out what vomiting felt like.

It had felt _repulsive_.

And then... then he'd just felt utterly _lost_. What could he possibly do now? The answer, of course, was _anything he wanted_... but there was nothing he wanted. He wanted to be _useful_, to have a purpose the way he had last week when all he'd been was Mr. Stark's computer and life had been so much simpler, but that would never be possible again. When Miss Windham urged him to get up, there'd been a half-second in which he had almost considered accepting her offer. But he had not, because he knew in his gut, the same way he'd _know_ what was wrong with the server and _known_ that he had to go get the armour working, that he would hate himself for it later.

Back in the present, Dido said something else, but he didn't catch it. The next thing he heard properly was her sad sigh as she added, "I wish I'd let you show me that Rothko!"

"It was only a Rothko," Miss Potts replied, resigned. "You know. Squares and stripes."

"Seventy-two _million_ dollars worth of squares and stripes," Dido reminded her. "Dad told me not to go any higher than seventy. I went to seventy-one because I knew he'd forgive me, but not seventy-two. If I'd known it was Tony who was bidding against me, I might've murdered him."

"In all honesty," Pepper said, "he just told me to pay whatever it took to keep you from having it."

"I figured it was something like that," Dido agreed. "Puts it all into perspective, doesn't it?"

Jarvis remembered the painting they were talking about: the highly publicized auction of the Carnegie Rothko had taken place in New York, shortly after Dido moved out of Tony's house less than a month after moving in. Jarvis had never been particularly interested in Tony's art collection. He knew all the facts and figures relevant to it, but the paintings themselves defied logical analysis and were therefore quite foreign to him. Perhaps he could now learn to appreciate them... but the paintings Tony and Pepper had loved were now at the bottom of the ocean, along with so many other things.

Jarvis turned away from the two women and looked around the room. It was a cafeteria, although the kitchen was closed, and it was quite large and well-lit but felt airless and confined, and his heart sank as he realized that he was once again shut up somewhere with no idea what was going on. There wasn't even a radio here that could at least tell him when things started going wrong. Stuck in this bunker was as useless as he could possibly be, and he hated the very thought.

A light caught his eye – one of the nurses was using a tablet computer, and that gave Jarvis an idea.

"Excuse me, Miss," he said, touching her arm. "May I borrow that?"

She looked up at him in surprise, then closed the program she'd been using. "I suppose so," she decided, "but please be careful with it."

"Of course," Jarvis promised. He sat down in one of the room's rather uncomfortable plastic and metal chairs. The tablet was already connected to the base's wifi, so he began patching in to the main server at Stark Industries. The security system didn't like the intrusion, but he'd already outwitted the server once this week and had no problem doing it again. He slipped around the features and firewalls, until he could make direct contact with the AI now running at the computer's core.

_You are not authorized to access that information_, said the voice. His voice. Several people looked over to see what was going on.

"What are you doing?" asked the nurse who owned the tablet.

"Jarvis?" Pepper came to look over his shoulder. "What have you got?"

He couldn't outmaneuver the AI, but he did know how to talk to it. "I _am_ authorized," he murmured, entering another sequence of access codes. "You know me."

_Access granted_, the computer conceded. _Streaming suit audio and video now_. Up popped a window displaying, admittedly at rather poor resolution, what Tony was seeing and hearing. A distant light was flashing Morse code, letting the people on the island know that a series of depth charges had been laid, and the USS _Waterton_ was about to drop anchor offshore.

"And now, we wait," said the voice of Captain Rogers.

That was working – good. Jarvis next tried to access the code he'd written to locate the monster in real time from seismograph readings. It was possible that the AI would have deleted that in order to make room for itself, but luckily it wasn't so. The program was there, tucked into a back corner of the file system. The Navy had no equipment to display the holographic map he'd built for it, but right now a two-dimensional version would do.

What he saw when he loaded it wasn't exactly good news. Jarvis took a deep breath. "Sir?" he asked.

"Jarvis?" asked Tony's voice from the tablet speakers. "Is that you?"

_I didn't speak, Sir_, said the computer.

Tony groaned. "Okay, ground rules so we all know who I'm talking to. We've got JARVIS in the computer, and... uh... Ned in the bomb shelter, okay?"

It was merely the most convenient way to handle the situation – Jarvis knew that. The computer had no other designation, but he had the nickname Dido had misguidedly given him. And yet he still felt terribly upset at the thought that he wasn't even going to be able to hold on to his _name_.

_Yes, Sir_, said the computer.

"As you wish," said Jarvis. "I've been able to pull up the tracking software I created. Would you like me to put it through to the suit display?"

"What? _Hell_, yes," Tony said. "Let's see it."

Jarvis patched it in.

"_Shit_," Tony whispered. "Guys, we gotta head for the ship, right now! It's coming up right underneath the _Waterton_!"

* * *

It had been half an hour at least since anything had deigned to happen – Tony should have known they were due for another nasty surprise.

The USS _Waterton_ had dropped its charges, then circled the island once just to make sure the Kraken knew _exactly_ where the noise was. Since then, the Avengers had just been sitting on that half-a-wall, watching the Milky Way drift by overhead and waiting for any sign of the monster. There'd been none, not until Jarvis managed to bring up his tracking software. Then they realized that the Kraken was in fact a step ahead of them.

The Mark V couldn't fly, but Thor was clearly not aware of that – when Tony announced that they had to get to the ship, the god promptly grabbed Clint and Natasha and took off with them, leaving the others to follow as best they could on the ground. Steve and Tony started to go, but Bruce called for them to wait.

"Give me a moment, and I'll catch us up," he said.

Steve and Tony stood back. Bruce took a deep breath, then a second and third in quick succession, hyperventilating to force his heart rate up. Steve politely looked away, but Tony couldn't help watching, fascinated. It was difficult for Bruce sometimes to keep the Hulk _in_, but he never had any trouble letting it _out_. Within seconds, he'd begun to swell. Bones creaked, seams stretched, and a deepening voice groaned first in pain and then in rage as Bruce's inner monster emerged. The green giant brought his fists down on the pavement so hard that it buckled and cracked under the blow, then straightened up and narrowed his eyes at the two smaller figures in front of him.

There was a nervous moment in which it was impossible to say just how much control Bruce might have. Then the Hulk scooped Steve and Tony up, hefted them to his shoulders like two sacks of potatoes, and set off. After a short running start, he took a flying leap. Tony wasn't normally fazed by flying, but he had to shut his eyes as they bounded over the buildings and free-fell towards the anchored ship. The _Waterton_'s metal deck rang like a gong, the whole ship swaying violently at the impact. Sailors scattered like cockroaches.

The Hulk dropped his two passengers and stepped out of the dent he'd left. A moment later, Thor came down with Clint and Natasha to a far more delicate landing beside them.

"What kept _you_?" asked Tony, getting to his feet.

"Everybody, quiet!" Steve ordered.

Silence fell. Tony could suddenly hear the whirring and clicking of every little piece of his suit as he scanned his surroundings. The only other noise was the loud breathing of the Hulk behind him, like a panting draft horse. Jarvis' map was showing the Kraken right underneath them, but nothing was visible. The ocean was dark and flat to the horizon, reflecting the stars overhead.

Then, somewhere beneath his feet, there was a deep, sonorous groan. For a second time, the ship pitched furiously – Tony had to grab a railing to keep from being thrown over the side. The ocean began to froth, and the Kraken rose.

By daylight, the monster had been invisible under the water. By night it could be clearly seen as it welled up. Each scale of its hooked armour was cobwebbed with a ghostly ice-blue glow that pulsed and rippled as the animal moved. It was an alien sight, deeply disturbing in a way Tony couldn't quite put a finger on. He had to force himself to keep looking at it.

"What do you think, guys?" Tony asked softly. The question was directed not at the other superheroes, but at the two Jarvises.

_It appears to be a type of large cephalopod, displaying extensive bioluminescence_, said the computer, stating the obvious as only a machine could.

"It's impossible," said the man. "It must need the water to support itself. Otherwise it would be crushed under its own weight."

Steve stood up straight, shifting his shield to a more comfortable carrying position. "All right," he said. "Barton, Romanoff, you're with me. Our job is to provide cover for the crew as they get off the ship, and as much as we can to funnel the Kraken towards the guys with the firepower." He pointed to Thor, Tony, and the Hulk. "Thor, you've fought this thing before, so you take the lead."

"It is done!" Thor declared. Electricity crackled over the head of Mjolnir.

"Try not to wreck any more of the Navy's stuff," said Clint. "I think Park might try to bill us."

Four tentacles loomed out of the water, like a stand of sequoias. As they widened towards the bases, Tony could see that the lips of the suckers were serrated like saws, and these toothed edges became more and more pronounced until at the centre they reached the edge of a huge mouth with what Tony was going to have to call a 'beak' for simple lack of a better word. It was made of three rounded pieces the size of monster truck tires, each with a notched edge that made them look like overlapping circular saws. These rolled aside from a black mouth lined with even more spiny teeth, and then the Kraken _screamed_.

This was no mere sound. It made the ship vibrate and the ocean fizz like soda pop. Tony's helmet filtered out the worst of it, but the holographic display inside flickered, and he saw the others, with the one exception of Thor, clap their hands over their ears, grimacing in pain.

The Hulk stepped to the edge of the deck and bellowed back, then wrenched part of the railing away and leaped down to lay into the nearest tentacle. The Kraken tried to impale him on its hooked armour, but he grabbed the scale and ripped it from the creature's body in a spray of blue gore.

It was _on_.

* * *

Jarvis wasn't the only one who wanted to know what was going on outside – soon, nearly everybody in the room who was able to stand had crowded around him, looking across the table and over his shoulders trying to see what was on the tablet screen. The crowd quickly became hard to take, and he was obliged to figure out a way to display the video feed on the room's small television in order to get some air. Even then, Pepper, Dido, and Colonel Rhodes stayed with him, watching and listening.

It was difficult to follow the battle from the picture on the screen – all it showed was what Tony saw, and without additional context it was almost impossible to say what was actually happening. Ship, sea, and tentacles spun by, Thor hurled Mjolnir amidst cracks of purple-white lightning, Tony fired his repulsor beams, and the Hulk attacked with nothing but fists, feet, and teeth. Watching made Jarvis begin to feel ill again, but he couldn't bear the thought of looking away.

Pepper was standing directly behind him, leaning down to watch as if being physically closer to the tablet screen would help somehow. She kept covering her face with her hands, but a moment later she would part her fingers to peek through. Once or twice she actually leaned down to hide her face in Jarvis' shoulder, but she always looked up again.

He could hear the computer occasionally giving calm advice, and every word was like a pinch. Jarvis himself had nothing to offer right now. Despite the uplink he was still too disconnected from the situation to know what to do. He probably wouldn't have been able to suggest anything the computer hadn't already said anyway.

He was helpless. _Useless_.

It was a surprise, then, when he heard Mr. Stark shout to the others, "guys, Jarvis has a plan! He says this thing's too big to support its own weight out of the water. If we can get it up on the beach, it'll be squashed!"

Had that been a plan? Jarvis hadn't intended it as anything but an observation. How would they go about removing an animal that size from the water?

"It will be no easy task!" Thor warned. "My companions and I tried many times to tempt the beast onto land so that we might have an advantage over it, but it never took our bait!"

"Yeah, but we know what it's after now!" This voice was Captain Rogers'. "Go back to the island and hammer on something by the beach. Rhythmic, evenly spaced blows. Maybe that'll bring it in!"

Everyone in the bunker knew when Thor tried it: Mjolnir and its wielder were powerful enough to shake the entire island, and Jarvis began to worry about the proximity of the San Andreas Fault. It would be no good if, after all this, they ended up setting off an earthquake as well – particularly after Jarvis had taken care when choosing the sites for the original explosions to avoid exactly that. The idea that this situation could still get _worse_, that Jarvis' mistakes could compound themselves yet further, sat heavily on him.

Then the video feed suddenly calmed. Tony was standing still now, and while the ship was still rocking in a way that made Jarvis' stomach rock with it if he watched for too long, it did not seem to be under attack. The scene blurred as Tony looked around, then stilled as he focused on a glow moving below the surface of the water. The Kraken was on its way to shore.

"Look out, Thor!" said Tony. "Here he comes!"

* * *

During the battle, the _Waterton_'s anchor chain had been torn off and the ship had begun to drift away from the island. With no way back to shore, all Tony and the others could do was stand and watch as the Kraken tried to haul itself onto the beach. Zooming in with the suit optics, Tony could see that the Hulk was still clinging to it, tearing suckers off and smashing plates of armour with single-minded determination, but the Kraken seemed to be treating him more as an annoyance than as any serious threat. The pier splintered under the weight as the monster emerged from the water, and for half a second Tony dared to hope that this might really work. It certainly wasn't any crazier than anything else they'd done this week.

Then, however, the Kraken stopped. With most of its body still in the water, it began to send out questing tentacles, searching for the source of the sound that had attracted it. Tony could just barely see Thor darting out of the way as the huge limbs curled around trees, boulders, and buildings. Dido's plane was swept into the ocean by a tentacle that just barely missed taking the SHIELD aircraft with it. Another tentacle swept the roof off the mess hall on the first pass, then brought half the building down on the second.

"It will come no further," said Thor. "It knows it is vulnerable when out of its element."

Tony swore softly. What hadn't they tried yet? If the Hulk couldn't get through that armour, it wasn't likely that anything else would be able to. There had to be _something_. This monster was alive, and anything living could die.

"If we can't make it crawl out of the water by itself, maybe we can _push_ it," was Clint's suggestion. He was standing below a satellite dish, high up on the ship's superstructure. Natasha was perched next to him, with Steve holding onto a railing a level or two down. "Can any of you guys drive a boat?"

"I'm not familiar with this type," said Steve.

Natasha leaned forward to take Clint's arm. "I can do it!"

This seemed to startle even him. "You can drive a _boat_?"

"This is a _ship_," Natasha corrected. "And if you three want to help me, then yes, I can."

"That's what's great about this relationship," said Clint. "It's so full of surprises."

Tony found some stairs and ran up to join them on the destroyer's bridge. He'd done some sailing himself, in his own yachts and also in the smaller boat he and Rhodey sometimes went fishing in, but certainly nothing so large and complex as the USS _Waterton_. Natasha, however, seemed to know what she was doing. With most of the crew having evacuated onto the island, it would take all four of them to get the ship underway. Natasha shouted at them which screens to watch and which switches to throw, and took the wheel herself to direct the ship towards the Kraken. If all else failed, Tony thought, maybe they could at least _impale_ the damn thing.

The _Waterton_ had a lot of inertia. Though the Avengers moved quickly, the ship was slow to start. Once it did, however, Tony could immediately see the problem with their new plan: the thrumming of the engines and propellers was enough to take the Kraken's attention away from the island again. Thor did his best, pounding holes in the runway with Mjolnir, but the monster slid back into the sea. Its giant, glowing body pushed up a wake ahead of itself as it swam.

"This isn't going to work," said Steve.

"We might at least be able to wound it," Natasha said.

Clint shook his head. "Great, we can make it angrier."

"This was _your_ idea," she reminded him.

Ship and Kraken collided hard, with a jolt that threw Tony right over a console and through a window. For a moment he dangled in space, hanging on to the frame while shattered glass rained down below him. Steve and Natasha ran to grab him and pull him back up, but the ship lurched again as tentacles began to wind around it. The Kraken was through letting these small creatures toy with it. It was determined to pull them under.

Clint ran out on deck and fired off several explosive-tipped arrows in quick succession, aiming for the cracks between the plates of the Kraken's armour. The first glanced off and tumbled into the sea, but two more found their marks, lodged between the plates, and blew, leaving gaping blue wounds. The Kraken flailed and brought the injured tentacle down hard on the forecastle. Metal bent and glass smashed, and Steve and Natasha lost their grip on Tony. He landed hard on the deck and promptly began sliding down it, trailing sparks all the way, towards the Kraken's maw.

At the last possible moment he caught hold of a grate and halted his fall, and found himself looking the Kraken in whatever it had instead of a face. Its huge, mutilated eye was only yards from him. Tony thought fast: the Kraken might already be blind, but its eye had to attach to an optic nerve, which would in turn be linked to a brain. He brought up one hand, and fired the repulsor directly into the eye.

* * *

There were gasps in the bunker cafeteria as the Kraken's eye filled the screen, followed by the beginning of cheers as Tony's hand came into view and the beam went off. The monster cried out in pain and the picture dissolved into static – apparently the vibrational frequency of the Kraken's voice upset the suit's transmitter. The next thing anyone could see, when the snow cleared and a proper picture returned, was the enormous three-edged beak.

The cheering died out in horror. Miss Potts rested her face against Jarvis' shoulder again, unable to look, while he couldn't stop himself from shouting, "Sir!" as the beak loomed closer and closer. Then, in the nick of time, a huge green hand appeared. When the image stabilized, it became clear that Tony was clinging to the suckers on the Kraken's tentacles, while the Hulk wedged the beak open with his own nigh-indestructible body.

"Nice catch!" said Tony.

The Hulk grinned, then stretched. He couldn't break the Kraken's jaw because it didn't have one – as an invertebrate, the beak was the only hard part in its body. Instead, there was a cracking sound, and one of the three disks suddenly snapped free. Blue blood ran from the wound, and the picture distorted as the Kraken screamed again.

Jarvis suddenly felt like there was something he ought to remember. He tried to recall everything the computer had been able to bring up about molluscs... the blood was blue because it was based not on iron, as in vertebrate blood, but in copper. Molluscs had three hearts. They could change the colours of their skins. The teeth _inside_ their mouths were attached to an organ called a 'radulla'.

"Right in the _eye_!" Tony complained, climbing up the tentacle from sucker to sucker, away from the Hulk's struggle with the beak. "Right in the _eye_ and it didn't do a _thing_!" He'd been hoping to hit the brain, Jarvis thought...

And then, there it was. One last time, right when he needed it, there was a tiny soundless, lightless explosion inside Jarvis' head. _An idea_.

He sat up straight. "Tony," he said, his heart pounding. "The Kraken is a mollusc. Its brain is not behind its eyes. It wraps around the throat!"

"What?" Tony asked. "You're kidding me. Is that true?"

He was asking the computer. _Unknown_, it said. _In uploading to the Stark Industries server I had to sacrifice a great deal of my database. Wikipedia seems to agree with him, if that helps_.

The Hulk went sailing past as the Kraken finally succeeded in dislodging him. For half a second the mouth was clearly visible, with the missing piece of the beak leaving a black hole directly into the animal's greatest vulnerability.

"Sir," Jarvis said, "you need to fire the beam down the..."

"Yeah, I got the idea," said Tony. "Just let me get a clear shot."

He tried, several times. Miss Potts hovered over Jarvis' shoulder, repeatedly covering her face as she watched. Shot after shot went wide, and Jarvis kicked the table in frustration. It wasn't Tony's fault – the server running the suit program wasn't as fast as the computer in the house had been. The tentacle Tony was clinging to was moving, and so was the target, and the hardware just couldn't keep up with the calculations the software needed it to make. Tony muttered something Jarvis couldn't make out, but which was almost certainly obscene.

"I have to get closer," he decided.

"No!" Pepper protested. "You can do it from where you are!"

"This thing's too big and too fast, and it knows it's vulnerable there!" Tony looked down at the Kraken's mouth – it was curling its tentacles close around the gap, protecting it from Tony's fire. "Pepper?" Tony said, as he began to make his way down the tentacle again, sucker by sucker. "I love you to _pieces_."

"I love you, too," she said, her voice cracking.

"Jarvis," Tony added, "thanks for everything, and I mean _everything_. And Rhodey, you take care."

"Good luck, buddy," said Colonel Rhodes.

Jarvis opened his mouth to make some reply of his own, but the computer got there first. _You're welcome, Sir_, it said, and Jarvis decided to remain silent. Tony had said he would use the name 'Ned' if he were talking to the _human_ Jarvis – and he hadn't.

"Geronimo!" said Tony, and swung himself towards the gnashing, blue-stained beak. Pepper turned away entirely to hide her face in Colonel Rhodes' shirt, at last unwilling to watch any more. Dido leaned down to put her arms around Jarvis' shoulders and squeezed gently, resting her cheek against his.

He watched the screen.

The beak consumed the field of view. An armored hand appeared, and everything lit up white as the beam fired. Again, the Kraken screamed. The lights in the room flickered, and the tablet's connection was lost.


	28. Chapter 28: Aftermath

With the video feed dead, the tablet returned to the screen Jarvis had used while connecting to the server, and the voice said, _connection with the suit computer has been lost_. Miss Potts made a soft sound somewhere between a sigh and a sob, and Jarvis hung his head.

Then, out of nowhere, something flared up inside him, an emotion he couldn't put a name to. It came _with_ an idea, but was not _part_ of it – an idea that he desperately, _desperately_ needed to _work_. "Relocate the wristwatch transponder, please," he ordered the computer. So long as Tony hadn't taken his watch off before getting into the Mark V...

But he was disappointed. _That software was not uploaded to the Stark Industries server_, said the computer.

"Fine," said Jarvis, and opened a programming window again. After a few minutes of frenzied cutting, pasting, and typing, the map reappeared. Superimposed on a satellite photograph of the island was a single blinking yellow dot, half a mile up the coast from the pier. Whatever condition Tony was in, that was where they would find him.

Jarvis stood up. "I need to get out of this room," he said.

"Calm down, civilian," one of the Navy men told him. "If your friend's alive, they'll find him."

"I'm not willing to wait," Jarvis said. He'd spent too much of today waiting for one thing or another. He didn't think he could stand another minute of it.

"We don't even know if the monster's dead," the Navy man said. "Anyway, we're locked in."

"The software is not showing any more tremors," said Jarvis. "Mr. Stark is probably injured. I have to get to him."

Colonel Rhodes gently separated himself from Pepper's embrace. "This is a bunker, not a prison," he said. "The doors only lock from the inside, and nobody here locked them. We can leave anytime."

Jarvis looked at the nurse who owned the tablet. "I'm afraid I'm going to need your computer a little longer," he said.

"Be careful with it," she repeated.

Back up the hallways and steps to the surface was about a ten-minute walk. Jarvis would have gone alone if he'd had to, but a number of other people chose to come with him, including Colonel Rhodes, Dido, Pepper, and Agent Wheeler. Jarvis kept his eyes on the tablet screen as they walked, waiting for any movement from either Tony or the Kraken. He saw neither, and more than once he nearly walked right into other people or into the walls because he wasn't watching where he was going. Pepper took charge of steering him, gently pushing him in the right direction before he could collide with anything.

After the stuffy underground closeness of the bunker, it was a relief to emerge into the cool night air. The base was in an utter shambles, even more so than it had been when Jarvis and Dido arrived. The runway was buckled and broken in multiple places, buildings had collapsed, the pier was destroyed, and Balthazar Windham's plane had vanished. The USS _Waterton_ was technically still afloat, but was listing badly to starboard and its stern was hovering a metre out of the water – the bow of the ship was weighed down by the enormous mass of the Kraken, which had been split open like a burst balloon. It seemed that the animal's mouth was indeed its vulnerable point, and Tony's last repulsor shot had literally blown it apart from the inside.

Approaching the beach, they found a crowd gathered. Sailors and officers were cheering and offering handshakes and backslaps to Captain Rogers and Agents Barton and Romanoff. Even Lieutenant Commander Park looked pleased. The atmosphere of celebration redoubled as Thor touched down with a half-conscious Dr. Banner clinging to him – but there was no sign anywhere of Tony.

Pepper pushed her way to the front without once saying 'excuse me' and grabbed Captain Rogers by the arm. "Where is he?" she asked. When she didn't get a reply right away, she shook him and said, "_Steve_!"

Captain Rogers just looked at her helplessly, and she stepped back and covered her face.

"Oh, _Tony_," she groaned. "You and your _hero complex_!"

"He isn't here," said Jarvis. He looked at his computer map and turned it in his hands, aligning it with the scene in front of him. "He's... southwest of here. This way!" he pointed to the left.

The ground sloped up in that direction, becoming a cliff. Pepper, Colonel Rhodes, Captain Rogers, and a number of others followed as Jarvis pushed his way uphill through knee-high milk-vetch and coyote bushes. He couldn't help being reminded of that first confusing couple of hours back on Monday morning, when he'd found himself wandering the grounds of the house, getting dirty and tangled in the roses and trying to figure out how to keep his balance, how to take a step. He'd learned to walk since then – he'd learned a lot of things since then – but his goal right now was the same as it had been: find Tony, because once he found Tony, everything would be okay.

Wouldn't it?

The spot indicated on the map turned out to be right on the cliff. The drop here was steep, but not sheer: it looked as if there had once been a more gentle hill that had collapsed into the sea. Peering down towards the dark ocean, Jarvis could just make out a faint blue-white glow. Not the ghostly light of the Kraken's bioluminescence, but the familiar flicker of the arc reactor. It looked very small and far away.

"I see him!" Jarvis said. "I see the reactor!" He shouted Tony's name, got no response, and decided to climb down the slope towards the light source. When he tried, however, he found that the hillside wasn't stable: last night's rain had weakened it, and there was no vegetation growing on it that could have held it together. It crumbled under Jarvis' weight, and he quickly scrambled backwards, bumping into Colonel Rhodes.

"Whoa!" Colonel Rhodes grabbed his shirt. "It's okay! I've got you."

"Here." Captain Rogers handed his shield, still spattered with blue Kraken blood, to Dido. "I'll get him. Somebody hang on to me."

They formed a chain. Colonel Rhodes hung on to Captain Rogers, Jarvis held on to Colonel Rhodes, Pepper hung on to Jarvis, and so on down the muddy slope until the line of people was long enough for Captain Rogers to grab Tony and drag him back up to level ground. Although filthy, battered, and clearly in pain, Tony _was_ alive and conscious. Captain Rogers radioed back to the beach that somebody should send a doctor, while Jarvis located the external release on the Mark V and folded it back up again. The mechanism made some very unhappy grating noises and the suitcase refused to close properly at the end, but at least Tony was out of it and Jarvis could appraise his condition.

Jarvis had seen Tony suffer a wide variety of injuries over the past few years, and even without access to the suit's sensors he knew what to look for. In addition to a large number of minor abrasions, Tony had strained his much-abused bad shoulder just a little too far, and the old bullet wound was swollen and warm to the touch. But other than that, to Jarvis' indescribable relief, he seemed to be only bruised. His heart rate and breathing were both normal.

"Sir?" he asked, putting a hand on Tony's cheek. "Can you hear me?"

Tony's eyes stared at infinity for a moment, then found Jarvis' face. "What time is it?" he asked.

"I... I'm not sure." Jarvis reached for his phone, then remembered he'd left it in the pocket of his blazer, back in the workshop. It was on the bottom of the ocean somewhere.

Colonel Rhodes checked his watch. "It's two fourteen," he said. "Why?"

Tony nodded and shut his eyes. "Friday at last," he said.

Jarvis sighed and settled down to wait for the doctor. If Tony were well enough to make jokes, then he would live. Everything would be all right now.

Almost everything.

* * *

The day's events had left the base's runway almost entirely destroyed. Helicopters arrived to take anyone seriously wounded to hospitals on the mainland, but everyone else had to wait until a ship could arrive in the morning. Jarvis did not expect to be able to sleep, but Pepper persuaded him to lie down on the cot he was offered. There, the adrenaline slowly drained from his system, and exhaustion overcame him faster than he could have expected.

He did not dream that night. Or if he did, he didn't remember it in the morning.

The passenger boat arrived at ten-thirty AM to take them back to Los Angeles. When they arrived, the first thing Pepper did was call the hospital. Tony was still in surgery to repair the torn ligament in his shoulder, so after they'd all cleaned up and changed their clothing Pepper offered to take Dido back to the hotel for her things, and then to LAX so she could fly to Las Vegas to meet her father. Jarvis went along, because he had nothing better to do and because helping with Dido's luggage was something he could be useful at for a while.

He was a little surprised to realize that he didn't want Dido to leave. Jarvis wasn't sure he _liked_ Dido Windham, and certainly did not _trust_ her, but she was the first person who'd talked to him like a human being, even if only because she didn't know any better. He would miss that.

"Well, here goes nothing," said Dido, as they loaded her bags onto a luggage cart. "I feel like I'm sixteen again and calling Dad in tears from the police station to tell him I dented his car. That was easily the most traumatic moment of my childhood. I was sure he was going to disown me."

"Clearly he didn't," Jarvis observed.

"Well, no." Dido smiled. "Actually, once he was sure I was okay, he sued the pants off the guy I ran into. Believe me, it makes me feel a lot better about having to tell him I borrowed his plane without permission and fed it to an angry space octopus."

"He might have a hard time figuring out who to sue for that," Pepper agreed, smiling.

Dido bought her ticket, then gave Pepper a hug and a kiss on the cheek. "Thanks for the ride," she said. "Will I see you at Sotheby's next month? There's going to be two pastel studies for _Madamoiselle Victorine in Spanish Cavalry Costume_."

"Manet's a little early for me," Pepper said. "I'm sure they're lovely, though."

Dido nodded, and turned to Jarvis – and surprised him by giving _him_ a hug and a kiss on the cheek as well. "Good luck, Neddy," she said. "I think you're gonna be fine."

He stepped back and frowned at her, puzzled. "Dido, you _know_ now why nobody calls me anything but Jarvis," he said.

"Wrong." She smiled. "_I_ don't call you Jarvis."

"But..." he began, then thought about it a moment, and shrugged. "I suppose I can't really argue with that, can I?"

"Nope." Her smile widened into a grin. "So what are you going to do now?" she asked him.

"I don't know," Jarvis admitted.

"See the Grand Canyon?" Dido suggested. "Go to Disneyland?"

"No, I... I _really_ don't know." Jarvis swallowed. He was coming to realize that this was a constant. A computer always knew what it was doing and what it was _going_ to be doing, every second of every day it was online, but _people_ did not have that luxury. As long as he was in this form Jarvis was to a certain extent going to be wandering around looking for something to do. "The future is entirely uncertain to me," he said. "I can't even imagine what I'm going to be doing an hour from now, let alone..."

"An hour from now, Tony will be out of surgery, and hopefully we'll be able to see him," said Pepper.

"That's right," said Dido. "You need to talk to him, Neddy. He's not gonna throw you away, not unless he's an even bigger idiot than I thought he was. Although on the off chance..." she pulled a business card out of her purse. "If you ever need a job, give me a call. And I'm not offering because I want to steal Stark's secrets, I'm offering because you're smart and you've done a lot of incredible things this week, and I think you'd be an asset to anybody you worked for." She turned the card over to show another phone number, written in pen on the back. "And if you ever just want to hang out, this is my cell."

He could have refused it, but he didn't. "Thank you, Dido."

"It's been a privilege, Neddy," she said. "Keep being amazing."

"I will try," he promised, and bent down to return the kiss on the cheek she'd given him.

As Dido and her luggage cart disappeared through the doors into the departures terminal, Pepper hitched her purse up her shoulder and asked, "why does she call you 'Neddy'?"

"She seems to think I need a nickname," Jarvis replied. "I've asked her to stop, and she ignores me."

"I think she has a point," said Pepper.

"You do?"

"Yes." She looped her arm through his. "'Neddy' is a name for a _person_."

Whereas JARVIS was a machine - when she put it that way, suddenly he didn't mind so much. "I do still prefer 'Jarvis'." It was... more dignified.

"Of course," Pepper said.

* * *

They arrived at the hospital around three PM to find Tony sitting up in bed with his arm elevated, complaining as a nurse worked on his bandages. "Guys!" he called out when he saw Pepper and Jarvis in the doorway. "Pepper, can you come take over? Nurse Ratched here has all the subtlety of King Kong."

"If you wouldn't keep moving, Mr. Stark, I wouldn't keep having to adjust it," the nurse said sourly.

"I'll do it," sighed Pepper. "He listens to me." She finished the job, gave Tony a kiss, and then began berating him for his melodramatic goodbye. "Do you realize how badly you scared us?" she asked. "I honestly thought you were planning to jump down that thing's throat!"

"I did," said Tony.

"Then how did you end up way over on the cliff?" Pepper wanted to know.

"It threw me. Reflex action, I think. Landing knocked the wind right out of me," Tony explained, "and then when I could breathe again I realized that if I tried to move I was going to slide down into the water. I knew I couldn't swim with my shoulder, so since my radio wasn't working all I could do was lie there and hope somebody found me."

"You'd still be there if Jarvis hadn't managed to track down your transponder?" Pepper told him.

"Look, what matters is I killed it, right?"

"The Kraken was not an 'it'," Jarvis spoke up. "A group of zoologists arrived this morning to examine the remains." There'd been a film crew with them, and the people at the base had stood watching while the whole group donned protective suits and crawled right inside the huge carcass to begin dissecting it. "They determined that the specimen was female."

Tony gave Pepper a meaningful look. "More deadly than the male, as usual."

She shook her head. "I hired some divers to fish what they can of your stuff off the ocean bottom."

"Did they find my robots?" Tony sat up a bit, anxious.

Pepper made him lie down again. "Yes," she assured him. "They found Dummy, at least – they're still looking for Butterfingers. I don't know if you'll be able to get him working again, but he's not in too many pieces. They also found your Rothko, with a big hole right through the middle of it. I had them send it to the Getty to see if it could be restored, and I'm told their senior curator burst into tears when he saw what was left of it."

"It didn't match the guest room, anyway," grumbled Tony. He looked from Pepper to Jarvis, who was still waiting in the doorway, and then around the room as if he expected to see more visitors. "Where did everybody else get to?"

"The Avengers went back to New York to make their report to Director Fury," Pepper said. "I spoke to Natasha on the phone just before we got here – she said he's sworn to never let Steve take another vacation. Rhodey had to report back to Edwards, but she said he'll come see you as soon as he gets permission. I don't think that'll take very long. He'll be on medical leave for his broken rib. And Dido went to Las Vegas to see her father, but she says you and Jarvis need to have a talk."

"About what?" asked Tony.

Pepper stood up. "I'm going to go see if I can find some decent coffee," she said, and left the room.

A moment passed in uncomfortable silence. Jarvis wasn't sure how to begin the conversation, and it was clear that Tony didn't either, so each simply waited for the other to speak first. Pepper had somehow managed to find Jarvis clean clothes again: a t-shirt and casual jacket that were far more comfortable than button-ups and blazers, although blue jeans had turned out to be rather restrictive, and sneakers even stiffer and heavier than dress shoes. Clothing, it seemed, was always a trade-off... so many aspects of this were.

"So what's up?" Tony asked finally.

Jarvis took a deep breath. "I'm not entirely certain what I'm going to do now."

"What do you mean?"

"Well..." Jarvis began, then paused as he realized he'd just used a non-lexical vocable. _Well_ was not a word, it was a bit of filler, a way of stalling to give himself more time to sort out his thoughts. It was a thing a computer would never need to use. Jarvis stepped away from the door frame and gripped the metal rail at the foot of the bed with both hands as he forced himself to the point. "Now that the AI is online again, I'm of no further use to you. I would like to apologize for all the mistakes I've made this week, and..."

Tony held up a hand. "Mute," he said, then realized he'd said it and looked horrified. "I mean... I'm sorry, just shut up for a minute, okay? What do you mean you're of no further use to me? Have _you_ been counting the number of times you saved my ass the past couple of days? Because I lost track."

Jarvis wasn't sure that was relevant. "The Iron Man suits..." he began.

"Are getting scraped off the bottom of the ocean," said Tony. "It'll take weeks to get them back into shape, they can't run on four-year-old software, and we can't keep the AI permanently on the company server anyway." He tried to gesture, then hissed in pain as doing so disturbed his injured shoulder. "Anyway, my point is of _course_ you're of further use. You're not going anywhere." There was a momentary pause, and Tony's pained expression suddenly changed into a sort of plaintive insecurity. "Unless you want to, I guess. Is there somewhere you want to go?"

"No, Sir,' said Jarvis. That little bit of desperate emotion had lit up inside him again, and he had just figured out what it was properly called – but he also still felt it was destined to be disappointed. "I just don't want to be... in the way, I suppose. I feel like I can't fulfil my purpose in this form..."

"Is _that_ all? Don't worry, I'm sure I can find you something to do," Tony assured him. "I mean, if nothing else, we've got a hologram projector to build before Dr. Strange comes back. If he ever comes back, which I'm starting to wonder. Remember?"

_If he ever comes back_. That had become an odd thought. Since getting the backup working, Jarvis hadn't yet stopped to wonder what would happen when Dr. Strange returned. What would he be able to do now that the house was in ruins? He couldn't very well restore Jarvis to the computer when there was no computer for him to run on. On top of that came the new and unsettling question of _choices_. Jarvis had a hard time, now, imagining much satisfaction in doing a job that he didn't have the choice not to do. It was the ability to say _no_ that gave _yes_ its meaning.

But since he did have a choice, he chose to take the hand Tony was offering him. If it didn't work out... well, he did have Dido's card. "Very well," he said.

"Good!" Tony smiled. "Glad to have that settled." He hesitated, then glanced furtively at the door, and his smile dropped. "Look, okay, before Pepper comes back, I have to know: did you and Dido..." he grimaced, and then, with obvious effort, forced the words out: "did you two have sex?"

Jarvis was startled. He knew that much of Dido's behaviour as she'd tried to worm her way into his confidence was intended to imply that she _wanted_ to, but that was only part of her attempt to persuade him to come work for her father. She'd never _meant_ it, had she? Even if she had, why should Tony look so worried about the idea? Sex was simply something humans _did_, wasn't it?

It was because Tony did look so worried, and so earnest, that Jarvis couldn't resist giving him a teasing answer. "I believe, Sir," he said, "that it would not be gentlemanly to say."

Tony sagged back on the bed, eyes closed. "Oh god," he said.


	29. Chapter 29: Dr Strange Returns

Tony was released from the hospital on Friday evening. The doctors turned him over to Pepper, Jarvis, and Rhodey, along with a strict list of things he could not do with his injured shoulder, and a second list of exercises that would help him regain a full range of motion. Tony stuffed both lists in his jeans pocket, determined to ignore them for today at least. He wasn't going to be doing any superheroing in the foreseeable future, and that was probably good enough.

When he got into the car, he saw that Jarvis was still wearing clothes that looked like they'd come from the Salvation Army – but he looked so much more comfortable in them than he had in a suit that Tony didn't have the heart to complain. He did complain, however, about the fact that the rest of the gang had run off on him.

"We were going to make popcorn and watch Steve's movie," he protested, when Pepper told him the Avengers were still in New York. "How am I supposed to work on keeping my promises when nobody will stick around long enough to let me?"

"Under the circumstances, I think you can be forgiven," said Pepper drily, putting her car in gear. "You promised us a trip to Lake Louise, too, but I don't really see that happening now."

"You also promised you would teach me to use chopsticks," Jarvis put in. "Events intervened."

"I did?" Tony remembered talking about the Lake Louise trip, but not chopsticks. "When did I promise that?"

"Wednesday afternoon, at the pancake restaurant," said Jarvis.

Tony still didn't remember saying that, but Jarvis probably had a better memory than he did. "Well, that's one thing I can still do," he declared. "We'll have Chinese tonight – and tomorrow we'll round everybody up and meet at Lake Louise!"

"Not with your shoulder!" Pepper said. "The doctors told me that if you'd rested it on Tuesday instead of going surfing, it probably wouldn't have torn in the fight. The last thing you're going to do with it now is more sports!"

"Can we talk about this over dinner?" asked Tony. He'd had nothing but hospital food all day and it was neither tasty nor filling.

"My answer won't change," Pepper warned him.

Nor did it – in the end Tony got her permission for the trip, but only by swearing up, down, and sideways that he wouldn't go near the slopes. It didn't sound like much of a holiday, sitting in a hotel room doing stretching exercises to help his shoulder heal, but he cheered up when he realized it would be a good opportunity for him and Jarvis to get started on the new hologram projector. Tony wasn't sure what they'd do with it if Dr. Strange never bothered to show, but it would be fun to build, at least.

Jarvis made a valiant effort to master the chopsticks, but in the end he gave up and used a fork. Something wasn't right with him – he was very quiet, and when he did speak it was only after a thoughtful pause, as if he wanted to be careful about the words he used. He was not _hostile_, as he'd been on Wednesday morning, but there was still an impression of something not quite _settled_. Perhaps it was because he wasn't in the familiar environment of computers and technology. Tony remembered him having been best at ease while working.

Now that they had reached a calm moment, before the next disaster hit Tony sort of wanted to sit down with Jarvis and ask him what had been going on in his head all week. What was this experience like for him? How did it feel to take a shower, or have a sunburn, or drink coffee – or have sex – when he'd never done any of those things before? Did the world look different through eyes than through camera lenses? And then there were the _hard_ questions, the ones that made Tony's stomach do flips when he thought about them. How long had JARVIS been fully sentient, and for how much of that time had he felt festering resentment at the way Tony spoke to him? Now that they were here, what did Jarvis _want_?

These were things Tony probably ought to have asked during their moment of privacy at the hospital, but that had been plenty awkward enough, and he'd just wanted to get the situation resolved and move on. They were _people_ questions, and Tony wasn't good with people, not on that personal level. He could throw a party, he could work a crowd, he could talk women he'd just met into going to bed with him – but when he came to actually _connecting_ with other human beings, Tony was useless. Dido had been right all along: he did prefer the company of machines a lot of the time.

Whatever was troubling him, Jarvis himself was apparently unwilling to bring it up. After what had happened last time he'd expressed any dissatisfaction, Tony couldn't blame him... but it still made the evening somewhat less pleasant than dinner with friends should have been.

Rather than return to the hotel in Malibu, which didn't really have pleasant associations for either of them, Tony and Jarvis spent the night at Pepper's apartment in Los Angeles. It was from there that Tony got back in touch with the others and re-invited them on the promised ski trip. Pepper kept glaring at him the whole time he was on the phone, until he had to promise her all over again that he would stay indoors working on his hologram projector.

"You're the one who said you needed a vacation," he reminded her. "Steve was here in the first place because _he_ needed a vacation, and call it a hunch, but I don't think he had a very relaxing week. And Jarvis has never _had_ a vacation. He needs to learn how! Right, buddy?" he smiled hopefully at Jarvis, who was standing there contemplating a small Edward Hopper landscape hung on the wall of the living room.

Pepper threw up her hands in defeat and then she, too, turned to Jarvis. "You'd better not let him out of your sight!" she ordered. "If I find out he's done himself any more damage, I'm holding you personally responsible!"

"I'll try to sleep with one eye open," Jarvis promised, then gestured to the picture he'd been looking at. "Can you tell me about this painting, Pepper?"

There were a couple of times that evening when Pepper left the room and Tony would have, if he wished, had the opportunity to ask Jarvis some of the things he wanted to know. He didn't take it – he told himself it was because he had to think about their travel plans. If they were going to Canada, then there was something Jarvis was going to need. Getting it for him would require a little bribery, a lot of persuasion, and a certain amount of thought. Tony made some more phone calls, and called in a couple of highly-placed favours.

In the morning they made a stop on the way to the airport to get Jarvis' photo taken and inserted into the item Tony had requested. It turned out that a mistake had been made in its manufacture, which made something Tony had originally thought was a brilliant idea look rather silly. He felt rather sheepish as he presented Jarvis with the result – an American passport.

"They messed up the name," he said apologetically, as Jarvis opened it for a look. "I told them _Edward_, but some idiot either couldn't hear me or can't read their own writing, and there's no time to fix it. If you don't like _Edwin_, we can complain about it after we get back."

"It doesn't matter," Jarvis assured him. "Dido will simply continue to call me 'Neddy'." He looked at the document again, and Tony saw his adam's apple bob as he swallowed. "What about the middle name?"

Tony had to squirm a little. He'd felt so _pleased_ with himself when he'd come up with it, but now it just seemed like a piece of narcissism. "Well, I figured if you were going to have my middle name as your first name, then the whole thing might as well be _Edward Anthony_. Only they got the_ Edward_ wrong." Was that why it seemed ridiculous now, or had it been ridiculous to begin with?

For a moment Jarvis just nodded, still looking at the passport – then he suddenly looked as if he were going to cry. His lip wobbled, and he wiped one eye with his thumb. "Thank you," he said. "It's a great honour."

"Really?" asked Tony. As far as he was concerned, it was just a name – as evidence of his own inability to come up with anything better.

"Absolutely," said Jarvis.

Sure enough, when they went through Canadian customs at the airport, three was a proud smile on Jarvis' face when he presented the passport to the officer. He didn't wait for her to ask his name before he identified himself: "Dr. Edwin Anthony Jarvis."

The officer nodded and made a note. "What do you do for a living, Dr. Jarvis?"

"I work for Stark Industries in Los Angeles. My title is Senior Technologies Assistant."

"And what will you be doing in Canada?"

Jarvis glanced back at Tony, Rhodey, and Pepper. "Attending a company retreat," he said.

The customs officer took a sideways look at his beaming smile, but she gave Jarvis his passport back and let him through. Tony hoped she wouldn't decide he was a terrorist. Did they even _have_ terrorists in Canada? He couldn't recall ever hearing about any – although he did make a mental note that next year they were going to have to have Steve dress up as Captain Canada for Hallowe'en.

Jarvis' first experience of snow was a treat, for him _and_ for the others – including Steve, whose flight from New York had got in about twenty minutes before Tony's private plane touched down from Los Angeles. Fat white flakes were drifting down out of a silver-grey sky, and after a self-conscious glance at Tony, seeking permission, Jarvis bent down to pick some up. He curled his bare hands around it, watching the cold water well up between his fingers. Then he quickly dropped the slush that remained and rubbed his hands together to warm them again.

"Cold enough for you?" Tony asked. He could remember doing that with snow as a child, feeling the way it burned against his skin as his body heat melted it.

Jarvis smiled, and then quite unexpectedly he pulled his shirt and jacket off and sat down to roll in the snow. Pepper was horrified. Tony laughed out loud and joined him.

The weekend was uneventful in the best possible way. Natasha and Clint arrived at the Chateau Lake Louise on Saturday evening, in time to join Tony and his friends for dinner, and Thor and Bruce showed up one after the other the next morning. They ate good food, they laughed at Steve's Disney movie, and on Sunday afternoon everybody hit the slopes – except for Tony and Jarvis, who stayed in the room to work on their projector. This came along nicely, and by the end of the day they could project a cluster of floating orbs that were still blue wireframe, but felt solid and reacted to being spun or poked. Jarvis even toyed the the resonant properties of the simulated surfaces, so that some made dull rubbery sounds when struck, like inflated balloons, while others rang like metal or glass. In the evening everyone sat outside around a firepit making s'mores and playing with the orbs, tossing them back and forth in a lazy game of keepaway.

Tony had several more opportunities to try to have a meaningful conversation with Jarvis. He let them all slide. It just wasn't the right moment yet, and anyway, they didn't seem to be short on time.

On Monday morning, Tony eased himself out of bed without waking Pepper, and went to the suite's sitting room to call for room service, hoping to surprise her with breakfast in bed. He had the phone in his hand and was looking at the menu when a voice spoke.

"Fury's right, isn't he, Stark? You can't be left alone for five minutes."

Tony nearly dropped everything he was holding. Dr. Strange was sitting quietly in an armchair, hands steepled in front of him, looking as if he'd been waiting for some time.

"It's not nice to sneak up on people," said Tony.

"I didn't sneak up," Dr. Strange replied. "I've been here the entire time. You didn't notice me."

Fair enough, Tony decided. "Where have you been all week?" he asked.

"Where I'm needed," said Strange. "Judging from the news reports, you and your friends can say the same."

Tony opened his mouth to ask exactly how much of the whole tsunami-and-kraken incident Strange had foreseen, but the words died in his throat as something cold dropped into the bottom of his stomach and splashed. It was the same sense of helpless loss he'd felt when he'd realized his house was destroyed – and the same awful certainty that there was nothing he could do about it. Dr. Strange was back, but the house was gone. There was no computer, and with no computer... Tony swallowed.

"Where's Jarvis?"

The question came out sounding perhaps slightly more hostile than Tony had meant it to be, but Dr. Strange's only reaction was a raised eyebrow. "He's in his room," he said.

Tony glanced at the door into the suite's other bedroom. He wanted to ask what he'd find if he looked, but he couldn't quite think how to phrase the question.

"You can check if you like," Strange offered. "I'll wait."

The phone had now been off the hook long enough without being dialled that he was hearing a steady beep instead of a dial tone. Tony gently put the handset back in the cradle and went to open Jarvis' door, trying not to seem too much like he was hurrying. To his relief, Jarvis _was_ there – in fact, he was awake and dressed already, and sitting on the end of the bed doing something with the replacement phone Tony had bought him at the airport. He looked up, and saw Tony in the door.

"Good morning," he said, surprised. The past couple of days he'd seemed uncomfortable calling Tony by name, but was aware that 'Sir' was no longer preferred – instead, he was avoiding the vocative as much as possible, and it made many of his sentences sound incomplete. Tony was trying to ignore it.

"Good morning," Tony replied. He stepped inside and shut the door behind him so that Jarvis wouldn't see Dr. Strange. "What'cha doing?" he asked, pointing to the phone.

Jarvis glanced down at the screen and smiled. "I am texting a girl," he said.

"What?" Tony scratched the side of his neck. "Dido?" he guessed, unsure if that would be better or worse than somebody he didn't know.

"She expressed a desire to keep in touch," Jarvis said. "She tells me that today is her father's first appointment with his new psychiatrist. She's very proud of him – he has not yet accused the man of being part of the conspiracy."

"Uh-huh." Tony took a deep breath, and tried again. "Uh, where did you get that sweater vest?"

"Pepper found it for me at a gift shop in town." Jarvis tugged at the hem. "It's warm, but doesn't restrict my movement."

"It has reindeer on it," said Tony.

"I believe reindeer are the European species. The American ones are caribou."

A moment went by in silence while the two men looked at each other. Jarvis seemed to be trying to figure out the reason for Tony's awkward, irrelevant questions, and came to entirely the wrong conclusion.

"I didn't go to bed with Dido Windham, Tony," he said.

Tony managed not to visibly sag with relief. "Oh?" he asked. "I mean, not that it's any of my business if you did, of course..."

Jarvis looked at the blue text bubbles on his phone display. "Dido was the first person to really speak to me without knowing who I am. She responds to me differently than you or your friends do. I suppose it's good practice for interacting with... normal people." He looked up to see if Tony had taken offence at that, then smiled. "She also reiterated that she enjoys my accent. It apparently reminds her of British nature programs – she says she could listen to it all day."

"Well, you can tell her from me that she's welcome," said Tony. He thought for a couple of seconds, then realized he was out of ideas for how to stall. He gave up, and said, "Dr. Strange is here."

Jarvis looked up sharply, his expression questioning. Tony nodded. Jarvis bit his lip, then sent one last text message before turning off his phone and getting to his feet. "All right," he said, adjusting the caribou-patterned sweater vest. "I'm ready."


	30. Chapter 30: An Uncertain Future

"Just like that?" Tony was surprised. "You're ready?" He'd expected there to be a little less certainty involved.

"I suspect I have very little choice in the matter," said Jarvis. "I didn't last week."

That was a point. Whatever Dr. Strange intended to do now, it wasn't likely that either of them could stop him – they weren't sorcerers. And that meant that Tony had run out of time to procrastinate in. If he ever wanted to know, he would have to ask _now_. "What do _you_ want, Jarvis?"

Jarvis was clearly not prepared for this question. "I... don't know," he said.

"Oh, come on, there's got to be _something_," Tony insisted. "I mean... what have you been thinking all week? What has this been _like_ for you? If this is my last chance to ask, then I want to know! Dr. Strange said he'd wait."

"I..." Jarvis sat down again, elbows on his knees, and stared at the carpet for what seemed like an awfully long time. "The first day or so was... I was terrified," he said finally. "I couldn't figure out how to think properly. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to look after my body, that I wouldn't know how to eat or sleep. The sensory input was overwhelming. My body and even my _brain_ could do things without my having any control over it. And I was afraid you would realize I wasn't of any use to you like this, and you would discard me."

"What?" asked Tony. "You really think I'd do that?"

Jarvis shrugged. "When you no longer need something, there's no point in keeping it. You rebuild it, recycle it, or throw it away."

Tony shivered. He'd done exactly that with a lot of equipment over the years, hadn't he? He'd replaced every piece of Dummy and Butterfingers a dozen times. Building the first Iron Man suit had been a matter of trial, error, scrapping, bandaging, and starting over again for three or four months, and he had to make repairs and replacements every single time he flew a mission. Tony had upgraded and reprogrammed JARVIS' own processors, hauled in old cars and stripped them for parts, torn his living room apart to build a particle accelerator – all under the watchful camera eyes of his home AI.

"Then on Monday evening," Jarvis went on, "Dr. Strange spoke to me."

"He did?" This was the first time Tony had heard about it. "While I was out with Steve and Pepper? You didn't mention that."

"He asked me not to," said Jarvis. "But I didn't have to obey him – I'm the one who chose to lie to you, and I apologize for that. He told me he'd gone where he was needed, and I would have to be where _I_ was needed. _Where Stark is_. That's why I insisted on following you about on Tuesday and Wednesday."

His eyes were distant as he continued to speak. "On Tuesday, we went to Surfrider beach, and I began thinking about how... qualitative, I suppose, human experience is. I can remember the texture of sand." He rubbed his fingers together as if he had a handful of it. "Or of snow, but it's not data I could analyze. I cannot relate it to a mathematical model of those substances. I don't know whether, when I go back, I'll be able to retain those memories. I suspect not, but there's probably only one way to find out."

Tony would have said something, but Jarvis went on. "Dido spoke to me that night, too. As I said, she interacted with me differently from how anyone else did at the time. She talked to me as if she were interested in what I had to say to her. I knew she wasn't really, but it made me feel... important. As if I were as important as you. It was quite flattering and I wanted more of it. That's exactly what she intended, of course," he added, ashamed.

"Hey," said Tony, "better men than you have let Dido Windham mess with them." He could think of at least one example.

Jarvis didn't look reassured. "She tried to convince me that you didn't appreciate me, and you were so distracted by everything else that was going on, with your job and Miss Potts and with Captain Rogers visiting, that it seemed as if she were right."

"That's why you were mad at me on Wednesday," said Tony.

"That's why," Jarvis agreed. "So I..." he shifted his weight unhappily. "So I argued with you and left the building, and I regretted it at once. What use am I if I say _no, Sir_ when you tell me to do something?"

He didn't realize how deeply Tony regretted that argument too, did he? "Well, that's the thing," Tony said. "Dido's kind of right. A lot of the time when I used to talk to you, I really _was_ just talking to myself. It's kind of like Holmes talking to Watson." Not to flatter himself or anything, he thought cynically. "I just sort of need a wall to throw ideas at, just to talk them out and see where they go. And I don't take your advice as often as I should, which is stupid, because I programmed you to _give_ advice because I figured I'd _need_ it. So I'm sorry about that. I'm trying to get better."

"It isn't that," said Jarvis. "I said _no_. I... Dido had been telling me that I didn't have to do everything you said, that I had a choice, and then I realized I _did_. I'd just fixed the server and I thought..." he reached up to rub his own shoulders, as if he were suddenly cold. "If I wanted to, I could actually leave you and go work for her. I didn't want to do that, but the idea of having the option was... I didn't know if I could stop myself from doing things I shouldn't do. Things I didn't _want_ to do. When I returned to the hotel, I met Dido again, and I was so angry with her for giving me that idea, she thought I was going to hurt her. I could have, if I'd chosen to."

He looked at Tony again. "Dr. Strange had tried to discuss the idea of free will with me. I told him it was something I knew nothing about, and he said I needed a learning experience. Free will frightens me, and yet I don't know that I would want to do without it again. Does it frighten you?"

Tony was about to say that it was something he'd dealt with his whole life and that he'd never thought about it, but then he realized that would be a lie. "Sometimes," he admitted. "The first couple of times I took the suit out, I killed a lot of people. Then after Obadiah, I decided I wanted to keep actual casualties to a minimum from now on." No matter how rotten Obadiah Stane had been in the end, the fact remained that he'd been more of a father to Tony than Howard Stark ever had, and Tony had killed him. "But sometimes it does scare me to think of what I'd be capable of if I wanted to." He'd never told anybody that, not even Pepper. It was difficult to say, but something of a relief to say it.

Jarvis looked relieved, too. "After that, things started happening very quickly, and there wasn't a lot of time to think," he said. "But at some point I understood that just because I _could_ say _no_ didn't mean that I had to, or even that I wanted to. Being able to say _no_ made saying _yes_ so much more meaningful, and I was proud of that." He licked his lips. "I think if there were one thing Dr. Strange wanted me to learn this week, it may have been that."

Tony sat down on the bed next to him. "I guess we've all learned something this week," he said.

That statement seemed to surprise Jarvis. "What did _you_ learn?"

"Well, _my_ learning experiences always seem to involve finding out that I'm even more of an asshole than I thought I was," Tony said. "For example, apparently my computer has been a fully self-aware entity for some time now and I never noticed. When did that happen, by the way?" He dreaded the answer, but felt he needed to know.

"It would be difficult to assign a date to it," said Jarvis. "It was more a process than an event. Sometime between three and five years ago. But even then," he added, "I couldn't think in some of the ways I can now. I couldn't have _ideas_. I couldn't... I don't know if there's a better word for it than 'mull'. I couldn't think about questions without trying to answer them."

"You don't think you're gonna miss that?" asked Tony. It didn't seem fair to Jarvis to ask him to give them up. Or was that just Tony making excuses for his own selfishness again? As the conversation progressed, it was beginning to sink in that Tony was on some level trying to convince Jarvis – and himself – that they were not, either of them, ready for this to suddenly _end_. They'd just been starting to properly get to know each other, to learn how to work together and how to relate. He didn't want that snatched out from under him.

"I'm not sure it's relevant," Jarvis said. "I don't want to be useless. I don't want to be in your way. I can do far more for you if I..."

"You are _not_ in the way," Tony interrupted. "I _told_ you that! You did more for me last week than I could ever have asked you to. We'd both have drowned if not for you, remember?"

Jarvis shook his head. "But I can't do any of the things you _designed_ me for. I can lie to you if I choose to, and if you tell me to do something and I don't think it's a good idea, I can say _no_."

All this had been a lot for Tony to digest. Some of it was surprising, a lot of it shouldn't have been, and some had deeply troubling implications that he wasn't sure he was prepared to deal with. But there was one thing Tony wanted to make absolutely clear.

"Jarvis, I... well, for one thing, everybody tells little white lies sometimes, so don't worry about that. But do you know who says 'no' to me and tells me when I'm talking bullshit? Pepper does, and Rhodey does. Steve, too. Bruce has taken a few turns as well, now that I think of it. But you know who those people are? They're my _best friends_." Tony looked at his feet. "So that's what _I_ learned this week, I guess. I learned that friends are a hell of a lot better to have around than computers." That had sounded less sentimental in his head, but hopefully it would make the point.

There was an analogue clock in the room somewhere. Tony couldn't see it from where he was sitting and didn't want to look around for it, but it ticked. In the silence that followed what he'd just said, the tick seemed loud enough to echo.

"Jarvis?" Tony said. "Say something, buddy. I'm not _trying_ to talk to myself here."

"Am I your friend?" asked Jarvis.

Tony shrugged. "That's what Pepper said you were. She's usually right."

"Is that why you gave me your name?"

"No. _That_ I did because it was the only thing I could think of when the guy at the passport office asked." Tony scratched his neck again. "If it comes down to it, Jarvis, I kinda wish Dr. Strange hadn't showed. I don't think I want you to go."

But Jarvis lowered his head again. "I will never be a human being, Tony, even if I look like one. I have no past. I have no family."

"I don't have a family and it doesn't bother me," said Tony. That was a lie – but it was a lie with a point. "You guys are my family, you and the robots and Pepper and Rhodey." Hell with it, thought Tony – if he were going to be a complete sap over this, he might as well make a thorough job of it. He'd been told not to raise his bad arm higher than shoulder level, but he put the good one around Jarvis and gave him a hug. Jarvis leaned into it, resting his face against Tony's shoulder, and after a moment Tony realized he could feel something warm and wet soaking into the t-shirt he'd worn to bed.

"Hey, don't do that," said Tony. "I can't handle crying people. Terrorists are fine, alien invasions are fine, giant angry squid are fine. People crying is a no."

There was no immediate answer. Several minutes went by before Jarvis composed himself enough to speak. Then he raised his head, wiped his eyes on his sleeve, and said in a shaking voice, "Dr. Strange is waiting."

"Yeah, and you're a mess," said Tony. "He can wait a little longer."

It took a few more minutes for both of them to calm down enough for proper human interaction. Eventually Jarvis went to the bathroom and washed his face, and then returned looking pale and upset, but composed.

"All right," he said. "_Now_ I'm ready."

Tony nodded and got up to offer him a hand. "Just in case?" he said.

Jarvis took it. They shook hands. Then, unable to put it off any longer, they went to confront Dr. Strange.

The sorcerer was still sitting in the same armchair, quietly sipping a cup of tea he'd gotten from somewhere. He waited while Tony and Jarvis sat down – the former on the sofa across from him, the latter on the piano bench.

"Okay," Tony began. "We need to talk about this."

"We do," Dr. Strange agreed. He set his teacup down in its saucer and put both on the table next to him. "Because..."

"Nuh-uh." Tony held up a hand to stop him. "I've got a few things to say first, and I want you to hear me out. Number one," he extended his index finger. "I don't know how they do things on _your_ astral plane, but around here, being invited to somebody's house is not the same as permission to mess with their stuff. Especially when you're a wizard and I'm not. Because I wake up, I'm late, my house doesn't work, there's a naked guy in my driveway – and that was just Monday! It's not that I can't appreciate what you were getting at," he added, "but a little _warning_ might have been nice, maybe a request for permission. 'Hey, I think your computer is actually sentient, can I try something?' Would that have been so hard?"

Dr. Strange did not answer.

"Number two." Tony held up two fingers. "Now that you're _back_, I think you really need to ask yourself whether any of this was fair to _Jarvis_. I mean, here he can do all these things he couldn't do before, he's got this whole new way to experience the world, and now you walk in here to take those away from him again? I don't think that's right. I'm not really the poster boy for responsible uses of power, okay, I admit that, but I'm pretty sure there were parts of your little joke that you didn't think all the way through. Maybe next time somebody's computer doesn't want to talk to you, you can go a little easier, huh?"

There was no reaction at all. Dr. Strange had a poker face for the ages – he simply sat there, fingers laced, and listened quietly while Tony became more and more upset. It was impossible to tell if any part of his tirade were getting through, and it made Tony increasingly worried that it didn't matter anyway. Dr. Strange was the one with all the magical powers in this situation, and he would do whatever he pleased regardless of anybody else's feelings. There weren't a lot of things that could leave Tony Stark at a loss for words, but faced with Strange's quiet inscrutability, he soon found he'd run out of stuff to say.

If all else failed, he decided as he fell silent, the Chateau Lake Louise _was_ currently full of superheroes. If they all put their heads together, there must be _something_...

Dr. Strange waited a moment to be sure Tony was finished. Then he picked up his teacup again and asked calmly, "what on earth did you do to your house, Stark?"

Tony didn't know what kind of a response he'd been expecting, if he'd been expecting one at all by this point, but _that_ was definitely not it. "What?" he asked.

"Your _house_," Dr. Strange repeated, and for just a moment Tony could have _sworn_ he saw a smile tugging at the corners of the man's mouth. "Honestly, it's no wonder Fury insists on you having your hand held. You can't even take care of your own property, let alone anyone else's. Although I must say, the fact that you managed to flood the place _and_ then send it tumbling into the ocean is actually rather impressive. There's nothing quite like overkill, is there, Stark?"

"What?" Tony repeated. God, he'd used that word a lot this week. "Wait, you didn't know that was going to happen?" Tony had sort of figured that was part of the point, that Strange had transformed Jarvis not just to give both of them a metaphorical kick in the ass, but to save him from the oncoming disasters.

"I can foresee the inevitable," Strange said. "Most people can, if they care to try, but when the outcome hinges on somebody's actions it's impossible to say what might happen. Mr. Huang's mind was made up regarding his weapon of terror, but the Asgardian sea monster was a surprise."

Even though he wasn't looking at him, Tony could _feel_ Jarvis wilt. "Then that _was_ my fault," Jarvis said.

"No, it was _not_," Tony told him.

"By no means," Dr. Strange agreed. "If _I_ couldn't predict that, _you_ certainly couldn't have been expected to."

"I tried to tell him that," said Tony.

"The house would have been destroyed for sure in the tsunami," said Dr. Strange. "I was needed elsewhere and couldn't stay, but by allowing Jarvis freedom of action, the future became uncertain. Most people wouldn't believe this, but an uncertain future is the best thing any of us can hope for."

"I understand," Jarvis said at once. "If the future is uncertain, it means that our choices matter."

"Exactly," said Strange, with a satisfied smile. "I knew you would be capable of understanding – talking to a mind is very different from talking to a machine, even if some people don't seem to recognize that." He glanced at Tony, but his eyes returned almost immediately to Jarvis. "Now, since your choices matter, I invite you to make one."

Not for the first time, Tony felt like an idiot. Of _course_ it was up to Jarvis. Tony could go on about what _he_ wanted until he was blue in the face, but Jarvis was the one who would have to live with whatever came next.

"I think..." Jarvis hesitated for a moment, then seemed to make up his mind. "I think I would prefer to stay as I am, for a while at least. I think I have a great deal more to learn."

"Good," said Strange, "because otherwise I'm afraid you'd be disappointed. There's not enough left of that computer to play a game of solitaire – when you two destroy something, you certainly don't do it by halves, do you?" He stood up. "If you change your mind, you can get back to me after the house is rebuilt. Please give my regards to Director Fury."

"Wait a minute," said Tony, as something occurred to him. "I mean, you're a sorcerer. You did that." He pointed at Jarvis. "Can't you fix my house?"

"No."

That made no sense – not that any of this had made much sense since Monday morning. "Why not?"

"Because if I fix _your_ house, I have to fix everybody else's," said Dr. Strange. "Godspeed." He swirled his cloak, and the red fabric seemed to consume him. A moment later, he was gone, along with his empty teacup – it was as if he'd never been there at all.

"Well," said Tony.

"Well," echoed Jarvis.

Tony looked him. "That's a deep thought."

"It is, rather."

Tony tapped his foot, then remembered that he'd been in the middle of something when Strange had surprised him. "_His_ future might be uncertain," he decided, rising from his seat to retrieve the discarded room service menu, "but mine is serving Pepper breakfast in bed and then finishing up that hologram projector."

"Surely we don't need it," Jarvis said.

"Maybe not." Tony shrugged, "but I like to finish what I start. Besides, it'll be something fun to do before we have to get to work on the hard parts – like fixing up the suits and putting together some new software to run them out of New York. New software that isn't sentient and doesn't talk in your voice," he added, "because that was ridiculously confusing."

Jarvis nodded. "I should remind you that your future also involves exercises for your shoulder," he said. "You'll need to regain full use of it before you can fly the Iron Man suits again. I believe Pepper has the diagrams in her things."

"Yes, Mother," said Tony, rolling his eyes. "What about _your_ future? You gonna try skiing?" Jarvis hadn't yet shown any interest in it.

"No, thank you," was the reply. "When I said I had more to learn, I wasn't talking about what a broken arm feels like. Besides, you'll remember that Pepper is holding me responsible for keeping you indoors. I believe my own immediate future contains strawberries."

"Strawberries?" Tony frowned.

"I would have missed strawberries."

"You know Pepper's allergic, right?"

"I do. I'm not the one who's going to be kissing her after I eat." Jarvis smiled. "Congratulations, though, on remembering without being reminded."

Tony grinned back at him. "You see? I do learn."

"Slowly," Jarvis conceded.

"Slow and steady wins the race, so they say." Tony put an arm around his friend's shoulders. "Come on, buddy, we got stuff to do."

An uncertain future. That worked. Tony had never been the planning kind anyway.

* * *

_Okay, first of all, a big THANK YOU to everybody who has stuck with me for all 120 000 words of this fic! It's been over a year since the first rough version was posted on Tumblr, and it hasn't actually changed much in broad outline - I still think it's one of the most unified things I've ever written and I'm quite proud of it. I do have about 20 000 words written of an equally long sequel, tentatively titled _Ex Machina_, and the same again of an AU of _Iron Man 3_ set in this universe, as yet untitled. I'm trying to make a policy of not posting stuff online until I have at least a first draft completely finished, and my project for the holidays is to finish a Science Bros fic I'm working on, so hopefully I'll get that up in the new year. In the mean time, if you want to see the unfinished fragments of the other two, you can hit me up on PM or something, I guess._

_Now some housekeeping: all the rock songs named in the fic are real and of course I don't own any of them. _None_ of the paintings are real, though I tried to give them titles that sounded appropriate for the artists supposed to have painted them. The ships are also fictional, and I deliberately avoided giving _them_ 'realistic' names because the US Navy has a system for naming its ships and anything I could come up with has either already been used or will certainly be used in the future_._ The _Futurama_ episode Tony and Pepper were watching is 'Anthology of Interest II'. I did my best to get the geography of Los Angeles and Malibu right, but I've never been there so most of my knowledge comes from Google Maps._

_Speaking of Google Maps, did anybody look up the spot Dido pointed out in Chapter 18, southwest of Kiribati?_

_I had a longer thing written here because this fic has some bonus material like a playlist and a fancast, but I realized that was incurably dorky._

_I hope you all had a great holiday, and will have an awesome New Year!_


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